THERMOSPRAY IONIZATION ON A SECTOR INSTRUMENT.

The thermospray ionization technique has been successfully demonstrated on quadrupole mass spectrometers. However, interfacing the thermospray source to a magnetic sector instrument presents some especially challenging problems because of the high voltages applied to the ion source. Unlike other methods which utilize an electron beam or a reagent gas (i. e. , direct liquid injection) to ionize the neutral species, the thermospray technique uses no auxiliary form of ionization. The ions observed by the thermospray method are those ions that are ejected from the solution during the vaporization process. The experimental parameters have been optimized. It has been shown that these parameters may not necessarily be the same for a high voltage and low voltage source because of field penetration.