Laser-induced acoustic desorption atmospheric pressure photoionization mass spectrometry for complex mixture analysis

Abstract

The field of mass spectrometry has seen significant development with regards to ambient ionization techniques. However, many such techniques are limited by their desorption efficiency and typically are best suited to ionize molecules of a more polar nature. This work chronicles the development of a novel desorption/ionization platform, laser-induced acoustic desorption atmospheric pressure photoionization (LIAD-APPI). The combination of these two techniques provides a non-selective method for volatilization and a non-polar ionization scheme shown to be very effective for a variety of non-polar species. This work also illustrates the optimization of LIAD-APPI through the use of computational fluid dynamics in a “sweep-jet” configuration enabling the sensitive analysis of low-polarity lipids. Ultimately, LIAD-APPI in combination with ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry is shown to effectively generate a representative distribution of ions from chemically complex heavy petroleum sources.