A simple desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization method for enhanced non-volatile sample analysis.

Abstract In this work, a simple desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (SDAPCI) source is studied and optimized for analyzing a wide variety of samples such as nonvolatile, volatile and biological samples. In this ion source, the heated mass inlet was used for sample desorption, and a solid needle was used to produce a corona discharge for ionization. The utilization of any additional gas or heater is not required in SDAPCI. Due to its high sensitivity, only a small amount of sample is needed. Sample loading and the consequent mass spectrometry analysis process could be easy and fast, which was demonstrated by the analyses of different types of samples ranging from non-volatile to volatile compounds. High-throughput analysis can be performed by SDAPCI source with minimum or no sample preparation.