Can someone please tell me where to find online literature explaining the theory of ion suppression and its application? I am quite interested in its application in coupling IC with LC-MS.

Thanks in advance.

Its principle application is for precipitating heavy metal impurities in your buffer salts and making expensive door stops. Just kidding Chris. Check the dionex web site.

Also look at Metrohm Web site metrohm.com
They are claiming a 100% resistant to solvents, molar acids and high operating pressures, up to 50 bar. Metrohm have decided recently to back up their claims of robustness and reliability by including a TEN YEAR warranty. To date no other manufacturer offers this sort of feature. High pressure capability can be very useful on LC-MS systems. It can be installed and used to work on other manufacturers IC systems... including Dionex IC systems, so maybe worth a look.
Jokes about door stops... Truest things are said in jest!!!

I got door stops for life !!! with my old Dionex suppressors. Thanks I try it !!

I am surprised that this site gets away with bashing vendors. If you have a problem take it up with the vendors. Stop pissing off the rest of the folks and please this is a scientific forum not a car dealership!

Now to address the above, I have tried both the Metrohm and Dionex suppressors. The metrohm device handles limited eluent strengths and supports only anion applications in the suppressed mode. Dionex offers both anion and cation suppressor devices. I don't see any major issues in operating either devices.

The Metrohm suppressor requires me to refill a bottle of water and sulfuric acid daily. The Dionex SRS on the other hand works in the re cycle mode for most IC applications. For LCMS I need to add a bottle of water and operate in the external mode.

They both operate fine except the SRS has higher capacity and I like using higher eluent strengths in my MS applications.

Sorry my message got cut off..

Unfortunately I don't know of any site discussing suppression in detail.

The most recent information in print on IC-MS with some discussion about suppressors is a short article in R&D Magazine (rdmag.com) entitled ESI-MS Quickens Analysis of Contaminants, February 2002. You should be able to get a copy from R&D Magazine. There is a link on the web to a 1998 article in American Biotechnology Laboratory that has a schematic of a membrane suppressor www.iscpubs.com/pubs/abl/articles/b9802/b9802wes.pdf>. Dionex has a variety of posters and papers on IC-MS that are available on request. Just to provide a little help here, I can say that ASRS-Ultra (2-mm) and CSRS-Ultra (2-mm) are continuous use suppressors and are recommended by Dionex for IC-MS applications using electrospray or APCI interfaces. The ion exchange sites are regenerated using hydronium ion or hydroxide ion from the splitting of water within the device so no counterions are present for contamination. The suppressor not only removes non-volatile eluent components such as sodium or methanesulfonate but also removes matrix counterions that can cause suppression of the analyte signal in electrospray and foul the MS interface. The 2-mm format is used with 2-mm ID columns that operate at 250 uL/min which is quite compatible with pneumatically-assisted electrospray or APCI interfaces. A variety of standard IC columns can be used with standard IC eluent conditions in IC-MS so there is little or no re-development of methods in transferring from IC to IC-MS. These columns include IonPac AS11, AS9, AS16, CS12A, CS14 and a 2 x 100mm CS12A-MS designed specifically for fast screening of cations by IC-MS.