Spray desorption collection: an alternative to swabbing for pharmaceutical cleaning validation.

Spray Desorption Collection (SDC) allows for much larger areas of surfaces to be sampled compared to traditional swabbing techniques, providing a valuable pre-concentration advantage. Closely related to desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), analytes from the sample surface are collected onto a selected collection surface, which in a second step can be analyzed directly. Here we demonstrate the application of SDC as a large surface area sampling tool coupled with paper spray MS (PS-MS) and demonstrate its capabilities for cleaning validation of pharmaceutical equipment for both acidic and basic active ingredients from an aluminium surface. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011