Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is often used as a mobile phase modifier to enhance reversed phase chromatographic performance. TFA adjusts solution pH and is an ion-pairing agent, but it is not typically suitable for electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and liquid chromatography/MS (LC/MS) because of its significant signal suppression. Supercharging agents elevate peptide and protein charge states in ESI, increasing tandem MS (MS/MS) efficiency. Here, LC/MS protein supercharging was effected by adding agents to LC mobile phase solvents. Significantly, the ionization suppression generally observed with TFA was, for the most part, rescued by supercharging agents, with improved separation efficiency (higher number of theoretical plates) and lowered detection limits.

中文翻译：

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使用增压剂提高肽和蛋白质的液相色谱/质谱的灵敏度

三氟乙酸 (TFA) 通常用作流动相改性剂以增强反相色谱性能。TFA 可调节溶液 pH 值并且是一种离子对试剂，但由于其显着的信号抑制，它通常不适合电喷雾电离质谱 (ESI-MS) 和液相色谱/MS (LC/MS)。增压剂可提高 ESI 中肽和蛋白质的电荷状态，从而提高串联质谱 (MS/MS) 效率。在这里，LC/MS 蛋白质增压是通过向 LC 流动相溶剂中添加试剂来实现的。值得注意的是，通常用 TFA 观察到的电离抑制在很大程度上是由增压剂挽救的，具有提高的分离效率（更高的理论塔板数）并降低了检测限。