1. CG/SM coupling

Capillary gas chromatography (GC) is a powerful separation method. Compared with liquid chromatography, GC achieves high efficiencies (several hundred thousand theoretical plateaus) with reasonable analysis times, mainly thanks to the high diffusion coefficients of solutes in gases (around 100,000 times greater than in liquids). Combining this separation technique with a highly sensitive detection technique such as mass spectrometry (MS) enables molecular identification with very low detection thresholds, of the order of a few nanograms for each of the constituents to be identified, sufficient quantities to obtain mass spectra over a wide mass range.

GC and GC/MS are the subject of specialized articles in the treatise Analysis and Characterization, to which the reader may refer for further information [1]