Abstract: A method and apparatus for analyzing a material by: forming and injecting into a vacuum chamber of a mass spectrometer a supersonic molecular beam of a carrier gas mixed with a sample of the material to be analyzed; ionizing the material in the supersonic molecular beam; mass-separating the ions according to their mass; and detecting the mass-separated ions of the material to be analyzed. The ions in the supersonic molecular beam may be filtered from ions of the thermal background molecules and carrier gas after the ionizing step but before the detecting step. The detected ions may then be used for identifying the material.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for producing ions by surface ionization by increasing the molecular energy of the substance to be ionized to the hyperthermal energy range, and directing a beam of the substance to impinge against a solid surface disposed in a vacuum chamber. The solid surface is one e.g., clean diamond or dirty molybdenum, which is capable of inducing from the substance, e.g., an organic halide, molecular ionization or dissociative ionization of the substance, and one which does not react with the molecules or tend to neutralize the produced ions. The molecular energy includes kinetic energy gained in aerodynamic acceleration by seeding a light gas, e.g., hydrogen or helium, with molecules of the substance to be ionized, thereby producing a hyperthermal beam of 0.5-20 electron volts of the substance to be ionized.