Discussion

At SLAS 2015 Washington we introduced the early development of a novel acoustic loading system for use with ambient ionization mass spectrometry. Our system is capable of loading 10,000 samples/hour into the mass detector, a rate that far exceeds current electrospray ionization (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) HTS platforms.
Fundamentally we are using a modified Echo 555 acoustic dispensing system to generate a mist of droplets in the femtolitre volume range from a standard 384-well plate. These droplets pass through a charge field and are ionized as they transfer through a collection tube and are taken into the mass detector.
The characterization of the system has been previously reported1, it can ionize a range of small molecules, peptides, proteins and can generate either +ve or –ve ions depending on the polarity of the charge field.
We now present additional data to demonstrate this technology can support biochemical high-throughput screening.

1. Sinclair et al. doi: 10.1177/2211068215619124