Agilent Technologies Introduces New Q-TOF Mass Spectrometry System

Enhanced hardware and software of midrange instrument sets standard for routine analyses

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) has introduced the Agilent 6545 Q-TOF mass spectrometry system, designed to provide added sensitivity for routine analyses.

The new midrange system includes advances in hardware and software that make it both more reliable and easier to use for trace-level analysis of small-molecule compounds in applications such as food safety, environmental testing, forensic toxicology and pharmaceuticals. 

The 6545 is engineered to be Agilent"s most reliable Q-TOF ever, building on a legacy for LC/MS reliability and adding hardware advances such as ion shaping optics, high-voltage power supplies, and longer-life parts to increase robustness. 

The system"s new autotune software leverages particle swarm technology to optimize the instrument for small-molecule analyses with the click of a button. In just about 15 minutes, it optimizes the instrument to get up to five times more sensitivity for small molecule compounds, including low-intensity compounds. 

"The 6545 demonstrates Agilent"s commitment to increasing mass-spec sensitivity at every price point, delivering up to five times the sensitivity of previous instruments for small molecule analyses," said Monty Benefiel, Agilent vice president and general manager of mass spectrometry products. "With Agilent mass-spec systems—along with our MassHunter software and compounds databases—any user can get exceptional quantitative and qualitative results." 

"The 6545 Q-TOF offers a substantial leap forward in sensitivity while maintaining all other features one expects from a high-end Q-TOF system," said Dr. Koen Sandra, director of R&D at the Research Institute for Chromatography, which has sites in Belgium and France. "Together with its improved robustness and advanced-yet-user-friendly tuning, the 6545 Q-TOF can be a workhorse in both targeted and untargeted profiling of small molecules in a wide range of applications. We were suddenly able to elucidate impurities in pharmaceutical samples that we overlooked in the past." 

Agilent is the leader in qualitative identification, offering extensive compound databases for pesticides, metabolites, mycotoxins, veterinary drugs and drugs of abuse for forensic analysis.