Major signal suppression from metal ion clusters in SFC/ESI-MS - Cause and effects

To prevent the formation of the clusters by avoiding methanol as modifier might be difficult, as this is a widely used modifier providing good solubility when analyzing polar compounds in SFC. A sample preparation with e.g. LLE would remove the alkali ions, however also introducing a time consuming and discriminating step into the method. Since the alkali metal ions were retained and affected by chromatographic adjustments as e.g. mobile phase modifications, a way to avoid them could therefore be chromatographic tuning, when analyzing samples containing them.