Desorption ion source with dopant-gas assisted ionization

A device to generate ions from a deposited sample, comprising:

• a chamber which is arranged and designed to keep the deposited sample in a conditioned environment, where the conditioned environment comprises a dopant gas,
• a desorption device which is arranged and designed to desorb the deposited sample in the chamber using an energy burst,
• an ionization device which, for the purpose of ionization, is arranged and designed to expose the desorbed sample in the chamber to an electric discharge, a plasma, or light of an arc discharge lamp with broadband emission spectrum, which are chosen such that the dopant gas is receptive to them, and
• an extraction device which is arranged and designed to extract ions from the desorbed sample and transfer them into an analyzer.

A method to generate ions from a deposited sample, comprising:

• keeping the deposited sample in a conditioned environment, which comprises a dopant gas,
• desorbing the deposited sample using an energy burst,
• ionizing particles in the desorbed sample by exciting molecules of the dopant gas and providing a charge carrier transfer between the dopant gas molecules and the particles in the desorbed sample, and
• extracting ions from the desorbed sample and transferring the ions into an analyzer.