Plasma-Based Ion Sources

FIGURE 4.6 Schematic of a glow discharge tube that can serve as an ion sonrce. (From Wikipedia. http //en.wikipedia.0rg/wiki/File Electric glow discharge schematic.png) 

As mentioned above (Section 2.3), corona discharge is normally used to support ionization in the APCI source. The discharge process produces a large number of charged species which constitute plasma. Ion-molecule reactions are responsible for ionization of neutral analyte species in APCI. Active species generated from different types of reagents 

The so-called low-temperature plasma (LTP) probe [126-128] has been used as the ion source to desorb/ionize condensed-phase samples such as explosives [127], drugs [127], 

---