Appropriate choice of collision-induced dissociation energy for qualitative analysis of notoginsenosides based on liquid chromatography hybrid ion trap time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Liquid chromatography hybrid ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometry possessesd both the MSn ability of ion trap and the excellent resolution of a time-of-flight, and has been widely used to identify drug metabolites and determine trace multi-components for in natural products. Collision energy, one of the most important factors in acquiring MSn information, could be set freely in the range of 10%–400%. Herein, notoginsenosides were chosen as model compounds to build a novel methodology for the collision energy optimization. Firstly, the fragmental patterns of the representatives for the authentic standards of protopanaxadiol-type and protopanaxatriol-type notoginsenosides authentic standards were obtained based on accurate MS2 and MS3 measurements via liquid chromatography hybrid ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Then the extracted ion chromatograms of characteristic product ions of notoginsenosides in Panax Notoginseng Extract, which were produced under a series of collision energies and, were compared to screen out the optimum collision energies values for MS2 and MS3. The results demonstrated that the qualitative capability of liquid chromatography hybrid ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometry was greatly influenced by collision energies, and 50% of MS2 collision energy was found to produce the highest collision-induced dissociation efficiency for notoginsenosides. BesidesAddtionally, the highest collision-induced dissociation efficiency appeared when the collision energy was set at 75% in the MS3 stage.