Description

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) is a soft ionization technique used in mass spectrometry, allowing the analysis of biomolecules and large organic molecules which tend to be fragile and fragment when ionized by more conventional ionization methods. TOF/TOF is a tandem mass spectrometry method where two time-of-flight mass spectrometers are used consecutively. The first TOF-MS is used to separate the precursor ions, and the second TOF-MS analyzes the product ions. An ion gate for selecting the precursor ion, an ion fragmentation region (e. g. a collision cell) and an ion accelerator may be provided between the first and second TOF-MS.