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Methods and apparatus for mass analysis of molecular constituents of liquids, including minor constituents, in which an electrospray technique produces electrically charged droplets which divide and evaporate to form gaseous ions of the molecular constituents. The ions are then drawn through suitabl

Methods and apparatus for mass analysis of molecular constituents of liquids, including minor constituents, in which an electrospray technique produces electrically charged droplets which divide and evaporate to form gaseous ions of the molecular constituents. The ions are then drawn through suitable differential pumping and focusing arrangements into a mass-to-charge analyzer. A charged capillary tube extending into a small chamber couples a liquid chromatograph or other source of liquid with a mass spectrometer, the electrospray technique being applied in the small chamber as a result of a charged liquid discharged from the capillary tube.

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A method of obtaining a mass spectrometric analysis of the constituents of liquids wherein electrically charged droplets of the liquid are formed by an electrospray process, the method comprising the step of producing said droplets by causing the liquid to be analyzed to flow through a capillary tub

A method of obtaining a mass spectrometric analysis of the constituents of liquids wherein electrically charged droplets of the liquid are formed by an electrospray process, the method comprising the step of producing said droplets by causing the liquid to be analyzed to flow through a capillary tube of small bore which is placed at a high electrical potential whereby said droplets emerge from said tube in an electrically charged condition in a small chamber maintaining the pressure of the gas therein sufficiently high effectively to cause the droplets to become suspended in said gas for a sufficient period of time that said charged droplets completely evaporate leaving substantially only gaseous molecules and ions of the constituents of the liquid and ions formed by ion-molecule reactions, providing a pinhole aperture in said small chamber and causing gaseous molecules and ions in said small chamber to flow through said aperture into a second chamber by maintaining said second chamber at high vacuum, and the step of accelerating and separating said ions from the electrically neutral molecules and focusing said ions into a mass-to-charge analyzer.