Single dimension gas chromatography (GC) is widely used for the analysis of a broad variety of lipid samples of a multitude of origins, most often used as a GC method in combination with mass spectrometry (MS). However, adequate characterisation and accurate identification of fatty acids (FAs) and triacylglycerols (TAGs) remain challenging due to their complexity, incomplete resolution on the separation dimension often confounded by sample matrix, and sometimes insufficient MS domain differentiation. The higher resolution of multidimensional separation enables improved quality separations that should translate to better reliability of identification and more precise analytical characterisation of major and minor abundance FA isomers that contribute nutrition and health benefits, and for compounds that can be used for medical and pharmaceutical purposes. Development of advanced multidimensional chromatographic strategies incorporating multiple separations coupled with different detection tools, including multistage-MS (MSⁿ) methods for FA in various foods, environmental and biological samples is described.

一维气相色谱（GC）被广泛用于分析多种来源的多种脂质样品，最常与GC（MS）结合用作GC方法。然而，由于脂肪酸（FAs）和三酰基甘油（TAGs）的复杂性，分离尺寸的分离度不完善，常常会混淆样品基质，有时MS域的分化不足，因此对脂肪酸（FAs）和三酰基甘油（TAGs）的充分表征和准确鉴定仍然具有挑战性。更高分离度的多维分离技术可提高分离质量，从而可提高鉴定的可靠性，并能对主要和次要丰度FA异构体进行精确的分析表征，从而为营养和健康带来帮助，以及可用于医疗和制药目的的化合物。结合多种分离方法和多种检测工具（包括多级MS（MS）ⁿ）描述了各种食品，环境和生物样品中FA的方法。