Electrospray Ionization and Its Derivatives

FIGURE 4.3 A photograph of an electrospray ionization (ESI) source near the pinhole entrance of a mass spectrometer. (From Wikipedia. http //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File NanoESIFT.jpg) 

The first reference to ESI-IMS was in a talk by Hill in 1987 and was later described in peer-reviewed papers from his gronp. ESI has become attractive as a method for IMS determination of biomolecnles and for the analysis of samples of enviromnental interest.  

The advantages of ESI are that liquid samples may be introduced directly into the IMS, molecular information is retained due to the soft ionization processes, and in several cases multiply charged ions may be formed. The main limitation with ESI for practical analytical IMS is that relatively long rinsing times are needed between samples because memory effects in the fluid delivery system can be quite significant. 

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