Chemical characterization of individual microparticles using an ion trap: real-time chemical analysis of aerosol particles

This paper describes initial experiments to perform laser ablation mass spectrometry in real time on airborne microparticles. The microparticles are sampled directly from the air by a particle inlet system into the vacuum chamber of a mass spectrometer. An incoming particle is detected as it passes through two CW laser beams and a pulsed laser is triggered to intercept the particle for laser ablation/ionization in the mass spectrometer. The initial studies were made with an existing ion trap mass spectrometer with the particle sampling occurring at the center of the trap electrodes. Performance of the inlet system, particle detection, and preliminary results are described