Combined Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry of Amino Acid Derivatives

Abstract

Different esters of trifluoroacetyl amino acids have been analyzed by the combination of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Good separations of most of the butyl esters were achieved on a stainless steel capillary column coated with Polysev and also on a glass column packed with OV-1. The study of their mass spectrometric fragmentation patterns shows that an insufficient GC resolution is not an obstacle to the unequivocal identification of the molecular structures of natural or synthetic amino acids, when the combination technique is used. As a consequence a wider range of liquid phase types are suitable for amino acid analysis.