Analytical instrument calibration and health check

Abstract

A method of calibrating or checking the operational state of an analytical instrument comprises ionising a reference compound so as to generate reference ions, detecting at least some of the reference ions or ions derived from the reference ions, and calibrating the analytical instrument or determining an operational state of the analytical instrument based on the detection. The reference compound is a solid at room temperature and atmospheric pressure that has been vaporised and can produce positively charged reference ions under positive soft ionisation conditions or negatively charged reference ions under negative soft ionisation conditions.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.