Atmospheric pressure air direct current glow discharge ionization source for ion mobility spectrometry.

A new atmospheric pressure air direct current glow discharge (DCGD) ionization source has been developed for ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) to overcome the regularity problems associated with the conventional (63)Ni source and the instability of the negative corona discharge. Its general electrical characteristics were experimentally investigated. By equipping it to IMS, a higher sensitivity was obtained compared to that of a (63)Ni source and corona discharge, and a linear dynamic range from 20 ppb to 20 ppm was obtained for m-xylene. Primary investigations showed that alkanes, such as pentane, which are nondetectable or insensitively detectable with (63)Ni-IMS, can be efficiently detected by DCGD-IMS and the detection limit of 10 ppb can be reached. The preliminary results have shown that the new DCGD ionization source has great potential applications in IMS, such as online monitoring of environment pollutants and halogenated compounds.