Electrochemically Etched Tapered-Tip Stainless-Steel Electrospray-Ionization Emitters for Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry.
JSON
Aerts JT, Andrén PE, Jansson ET
J. Proteome Res. 22 (4) 1377-1380 [2023-04-07; online 2023-03-03]
We have used household consumables to facilitate electrochemical etching of stainless-steel hypodermic tubing to produce tapered-tip emitters suitable for electrospray ionization for use in mass spectrometry. The process involves the use of 1% oxalic acid and a 5 W USB power adapter, commonly known as a phone charger. Further, our method avoids the otherwise commonly used strong acids that entail chemical hazards: concentrated HNO3 for etching stainless steel, or concentrated HF for etching fused silica. Hence, we here provide a convenient and self-inhibiting procedure with minimal chemical hazards to manufacture tapered-tip stainless-steel emitters. We show its performance in metabolomic analysis with CE-MS of a tissue homogenate where the metabolites acetylcarnitine, arginine, carnitine, creatine, homocarnosine, and valerylcarnitine were identified, all with basepeak separated electropherograms, within <6 min of separation. The mass spectrometry data are freely available through the MetaboLight public data repository via access number MTBLS7230.
PubMed 36866861
DOI 10.1021/acs.jproteome.3c00076
Crossref 10.1021/acs.jproteome.3c00076