Lasers for MALDI-MS

In the past, a variety of gas and solid-state lasers have been used successfully for MALDI-MS. With MALDI, only pulsed lasers are useful, because the energy necessary for desorption and ionizahon must be transferred to the sample in a time which is short compared to the thermal diffusion time. Axial time-of-flight (TOP) 

The beam divergence 0 is a fixed parameter for a given laser with a value of typically between 0.2 and 5 mrad. For Gaussian (TEMoo) beams, the spot size on 

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