A NO-FRAGMENTATION MICRO MASS SPECTROMETER SYSTEM

摘要

A system for effecting a soft or gentle ionization technique to avoid fragmentation of analyte molecules provided to a micro mass spectrometer for analysis. To ionize the analyte molecules, the system may be based on proton transfer reaction (PTR) for ionization, UV light to generate either positive or negative ions, or E-field ionization. For example, with PRT, there may be a water generator for providing H₂Oan ion generator. H₃O⁺may be provided by the generator to a charge transfer reactor that brings a stream of H₃O⁺ molecules together with analyte molecules. Then, H+ atoms may be transferred from the H₃O+ molecules to the analyte molecules without breaking up or fragmenting the respective analyte molecules. The ionized molecules may be provided to a micro mass spectrometer for analysis .