Development of a simple vent-free interface for capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

A novel and simple interface for capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed using a piece of deactivated stainless-steel tubing. This interface eliminated the need to vent the MS ion source when changing columns. Various chromatographic performance indicators, such as inertness, and thermal and chemical stability, were confirmed to be unaffected by using this interface at an elevated temperature of around 300°C. The new interface should facilitate the characterization of polymeric materials using analytical pyrolysis techniques in which frequent switching is required in the measuring mode, such as evolved gas analysis-MS and flash pyrolysis-GC-MS.