Latest News and Application Notes

GC-MS has proven its worth as a powerful analytical tool in many labs around the world, but this technology has more uses than routine analyses. LECO partnered with The Analytical Scientist, Restek, Axel Semrau, and GL Sciences, to launch an Application Challenge to find the most impressive uses of GC-MS technology, and we've never been more excited about the future of this field. From paint varnish to water quality, GC-MS is proving useful in more places than we've ever imagined.

While time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) was first proposed in 1946, the technology simply didn't exist to allow for fast enough processing speeds to make it widely viable until 1995, when the Fast Chromatographic Detector was debuted at Pittcon. This group went on to join LECO and create the world's first commercial GC-TOFMS, the Pegasus®, in 1997. Ever since then, technological capabilities have exploded. One-dimensional GC-TOFMS and multi-dimensional GCxGC-TOFMS are powerful and provide rich and highly informative data. If you have a number of samples to study, the volume of data produced might seem overwhelming.  However, LECO's data analysis add-ons for ChromaTOF® brand software, ChromaTOF Tile and ChromaTOF Sync, have once again pushed GC-TOFMS capabilities beyond what was previously feasible.

From May 8-12, over fifty members of LECO's global Mass Spectrometry team and international leadership filled our customer experience center in Saint Joseph, Michigan. Sales and application representatives from over 25 different countries—Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and more!—joined with our local research and development team to share knowledge and ideas. It was a fantastic week of collaboration as we strengthened our bonds as one LECO around the world.

The world of GC-MS applications is constantly expanding, growing into novel applications and improving classical uses. To celebrate the advancements of this powerful technology, LECO and The Analytical Scientist created an eBook that takes a look at some of the emerging uses of GC-MS. From measuring volcanic emissions to predict eruptions to developing the ultimate untargeted technique with GCxGC-MS, these articles explore a variety of topics.

For many of us, COVID-19 changed the way we work. It changed the way we communicate, gather, and network. Large tradeshows like Pittcon moved virtual or shuttered their doors entirely, and sometimes, that wasn't the worst thing. Less time traveling meant more time available in the lab, attending to your instruments. But after three years of this, it's time to step away from your instruments and let automation take over.

Few things in the world bring people together like food. Flavor and aroma are often central pillars of a good time. Whether it’s developing a meat substitute or characterizing the subtle intricacies of liquor, the study of food, flavor, and aromas is critical to so many industries that touch everyone around the world.

The analysis of peppers for flavor profiles and food volatiles is not new. With a wide array of varieties, peppers find uses in not just food markets, but also pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Analyzing peppers isn't new. Finding ways to increase the sustainability and "green" qualities of those analyses, however, is an ongoing challenge, and one that Micaela Galletta, Mariosimone Zoccali, Donato Creti, Luigi Mondello, and Peter Q. Tranchida tackled in a recent study published in Green Analytical Chemistry.

How do you handle the analysis and characterization of a complex sample like whisky*? In a recent interview with eFood Lab International, Dr. Geraint (Taff) Morgan of the Applied Science & Technology Group at the Open University, UK, says a 1D quadrupole GC-MS is sufficient for routine analysis, but when he really wants to dig into the non-target analysis of a complex sample, he turns to GC-TOFMS and GCxGC-TOFMS, such as that employed by the LECO Pegasus^® BT 4D.

If you make the same thing the same way every time, you would expect to get the same results. But anyone working in a quality control lab knows just how much variability there can be on the same line, especially when working with organic materials such as those used to make whiskey. Small changes in temperature or atmospheric humidity, or the quality of the initial mash or final barrels can change the aroma profiles of the final products, and the aroma profiles themselves can be the first indicator of a problem on the production line if they can be analyzed and characterized with enough speed and confidence.

With ever-increasing demands on your time and resources, optimizing your workflow is essential. Learn how state of the art instrument and software solutions come together, to enhance your one- and two-dimensional gas chromatography applications (GC-MS and GCxGC-MS) in a collection of short webinars presented on Wednesday, November 30. These webinars will be presented twice for ease of international audiences.