Ionization, molecular, from high-power

Laser ionization mass spectrometry or laser microprobing (LIMS) is a microanalyt-ical technique used to rapidly characterize the elemental and, sometimes, molecular composition of materials. It is based on the ability of short high-power laser pulses (-10 ns) to produce ions from solids. The ions formed in these brief pulses are analyzed using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The quasi-simultaneous collection of all ion masses allows the survey analysis of unknown materials. The main applications of LIMS are in failure analysis, where chemical differences between a contaminated sample and a control need to be rapidly assessed. The ability to focus the laser beam to a diameter of approximately 1 mm permits the application of this technique to the characterization of small features, for example, in integrated circuits. The LIMS detection limits for many elements are close to 10 at/cm, which makes this technique considerably more sensitive than other survey microan-alytical techniques, such as Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) or Electron Probe Microanalysis (EPMA). Additionally, LIMS can be used to analyze insulating sam-... 

At present, the most powerful and promising interfaces for drug residue analysis are die particle-beam (PB) interface that provides online EI mass spectra, the thermospray (TSP) interface diat works well with substances of medium polarity, and more recently the atmospheric pressure ionization (API) interfaces that have opened up important application areas of LC to LC-MS for ionizable compounds. Among die API interfaces, ESP and ISP appear to be the most versatile since diey are suitable for substances ranging from polar to ionic and from low to high molecular mass. ISP, in particular, is compatible with the flow rates used with conventional LC columns (70). In addition, both ESP and ISP appear to be valuable in terms of analyte detectability. These interfaces can further be supplemented by preanalyzer collision-induced dissociation (CID) or tandem MS as realized with the use of triple quadrupole systems. Complementary to ESP and ISP interfaces with respect to the analyte polarity is APCI with a heated nebulizer interface. This is a powerful interface for both structural confirmation and quantitative analysis. 

---