Chemometric optimization of a low-temperature plasma source design for ambient desorption/ionization mass spectrometry

Low-temperature plasmas (LTPs) are attractive sources for atomic and molecular mass spectrometry (MS). In the past, the LTP probe, which was first described by Harper et al., was used successfully for direct molecular mass spectrometric analysis with minimal sample pretreatment in a variety of applications. Unfortunately, the desorption/ionization source itself is commercially not available and custom-built LTP set-ups with varying geometry and operational configurations were utilized in the past.