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Updated: Aug 19, 2025

Atmospheric-pressure Molecular Imaging of Biological Tissues and Biofilms by LAESI Mass Spectrometry
Published on: September 3, 2010
Laser Ablation Secondary Electrospray Ionization for In Situ Mass Spectrometric Interrogation of
Sebastian van Wasen1, Yi You2, Sebastian Beck1
1Department of Chemistry, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
The composition of acoustically levitated droplets was probed by a novel combination of mid-IR laser evaporation and subsequent postionization via secondary electrospray ionization. The combination of microliter samples and subnanoliter sampling provided time-resolved interrogation of droplets and allowed for a kinetic investigation of the laser-induced release of the analyte, which was found to strongly depend on the analytes. The observed substance-specific delayed release of the analytes permitted baseline-separated discrimination of the analytes, ideal for the study of complex samples. The additionally applied postionization scheme was found to enable efficient detection of small volatile compounds as well as peptides. The detection of small molecules and peptides occurred under very different sampling geometries, pointing to two distinct underlying ionization mechanisms. Overall, our results suggest that the experimental setup presented in this study can serve as a widely applicable platform to study chemical reactions in acoustically levitated droplets as model reactors.
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