MALDI Mass Spectrometry Instrumentation

Peter B. O Connor, Klaus Dreisewerd, Kerstin Strupat, and Franz Hillenkamp 

A second important feature of MALDI is that it can generate ions with very large masses of greater than 1 MDa. In contrast to electrospray, MALDI ions carry only 

MALDI MS A Practical Guide to Instrumentation, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition. 

Edited by Franz Hillenkamp and Jasna Peter-Katalinic. 

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the instrumentation currently available for the mass analysis of MALDI ions. It is not intended as an exhaustive treahse on each instrument, and consequently if more detail is required the reader should examine the Usted reference material in detail. In the first sections of the chapter, the use of lasers for MALDI is discussed, and how they are coupled to the mass spectrometer, together with details of vibrational cooling and tandem mass spectrometry of MALDI ions. This is followed by a description of the different mass analyzer designs, with emphasis placed on commercially available instrument configurations. Definitions of aU acronyms, as well as technical descriptions of terms (such as peak centroid and resolving power) are included at the end of the chapter. 

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