Analytical laboratories studying the products of organic synthesis have to consider many things from confirmation of the final product to identification of impurities. Impurity identification, whether expected or not, is an essential part of the manufacture of fine chemicals, as any impurities could adversely affect the properties of the final product. This applies equally to the raw starting materials and the final synthesized product.
Obtaining MS/MS product ion spectra is one useful way of elucidating the structure of impurities, while exact mass provides additional confidence to structural assignments. However, the manual setup of each product ion experiment can be time consuming and prone to human error, so a Data Directed Analysis (DDA) is beneficial with regard to laboratory resources. DDA automatically selects ions for MS/MS acquisitions in real time, as components elute from the column. Recent improvements in the spectral acquisition rate (30 Hz) now enable DDA to be compatible with UPLC peaks.
Octahydroacridine (>97% purity) was used here for illustration purposes. Base peak intensity (BPI) chromatogram and extracted ion chromatograms of some of the impurities found automatically by FastDDA are shown in Figure 1. Octahydroacridine is interesting as it plays an important role in the preparation of alkaloids, dyes, drugs, and other biologically active compounds.
