TY - JOUR A1 - Villatoro, J. A1 - Zühlke, M. A1 - Riebe, D. A1 - Riedel, Jens A1 - Beitz, T. A1 - Löhmannsröben, H.-G. T1 - IR-MALDI ion mobility spectrometry JF - Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry N2 - The novel combination of infrared matrix-assisted laser dispersion and inization (IR-MALDI) with ion mobility (IM) spectrometry makes it possible to investigate biomolecules in their natural environment, liquid water. As an alternative to an ESI source, the IR-MALDI source was implemented in an in-house-developed ion mobility (IM) spectrometer. The release of ions directly from an aqueous solution is based on a phase explosion, induced by the absorption of an IR laser pulse (λ = 2.94 μm, 6 ns pulse width), which disperses the liquid as nano- and micro-droplets. The prerequisites for the application of IR-MALDI-IM spectrometry as an analytical method are narrow analyte ion signal peaks for a high spectrometer resolution. This can only be achieved by improving the desolvation of ions. One way to full desolvation is to give the cluster ions sufficient time to desolvate. Two methods for achieving this are studied: the implementation of an additional drift tube, as in ESI-IM-spectrometry, and the delayed extraction of the ions. As a result of this optimization procedure, limits of detection between 5 nM and 2.5 μMas well as linear dynamic ranges of 2–3 orders of magnitude were obtained for a number of substances. The ability of this method to analyze simple mixtures is illustrated by the separation of two different surfactant mixtures. KW - Ion mobility KW - Spectrometry KW - IR-MALDI KW - Laser PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-016-9739-x SN - 1618-2650 SN - 1618-2642 VL - 408 IS - 23 SP - 6259 EP - 6268 PB - Springer-Verlag CY - Heidelberg AN - OPUS4-37615 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -