A comparative study of APLI and APCI in IMS at atmospheric pressure to reveal and explain peak broadening effects by the use of APLI

Measuring the effects of Coulomb repulsion via signal decay in an atmospheric pressure laser ionization ion mobility spectrometer

Using lasers in ion mobility spectrometry offers a lot of advantages compared to standard ionization sources. Especially, the ion yield can be drastically increased. It can, however, reach levels where the Coulomb repulsion leads to unwanted side effects. Here, we investigate how the Coulomb repulsion can be detected apart from the typical signal broadening by measuring effects created already in the reaction region and comparing them with corresponding finite element method simulations.