Atoms with low ionization potentials can be ionized by contact with the heated surface of a metal, generally a filament, having a high work function (the energy required to remove an electron from its surface) in a process called thermal, or surface, ionization. This can be a highly efficient method and has the experimental advantage of producing ions with a small energy spread characteristic of the filament temperature, typically a few tenths of an electron volt, as compared with beam energies of thousands of electron volts. The filaments, generally made of platinum, rhenium, tungsten, or tantalum, are heated by current. Surface ionization requires a nearby source of atoms, often another filament operating at lower temperatures. Samples can also be loaded directly on the filament, a widely used and successful technique and one that has resulted in many interesting chemical treatments of the sample when it is deposited on the filament. One such application changed lead from a difficult to an easy element to analyze, enabling important geochronological and environmental measurements. A disadvantage of thermal ionization is the possible change in isotopic composition during the measurement. This effect is caused by Rayleigh distillation, wherein light isotopes evaporate faster than heavy ones. Studies done on isotopes that come from radioactive decay, such as those used in determining the ages of rocks, encounter this problem, but it is correctable using the measured values of the isotopes that are not radiogenic. With few exceptions the use of a thermal source requires the chemical separation of the sample. Useful data are commonly obtained on extremely small (e.g., nanogram) samples.

Spark discharge

In the vacuum spark source, a pulsed, high-frequency potential of about 50 kilovolts is built up between two electrodes until electrical breakdown occurs. Hot spots appear on the electrodes, and electrode material is evaporated and partially ionized by bombardment from electrons present between the electrodes. The principal merit of the vacuum spark source is its ability to produce copious quantities of ions of all elements present in the electrodes.

Secondary-ion emission

Direct analysis of solids can be accomplished by bombarding the surface with an ion beam, the impact of which creates additional ions from the solid surface. The bombarding ions transfer substantial momentum to the target atoms, knocking them loose from the crystal lattice of the solid. The process is, generally speaking, not selective, although there are significant differences by element in the efficiency of ionization. The bombarding ions can be given a fine focus, with beam diameters of a few micrometres attainable. This allows the observer to select specific regions of the solid surface for analysis through the use of an auxiliary microscope and micrometre values for sample motion. Ion bombardment eats away the surface with time, allowing the solid to be analyzed for depth as well. This method is the basis for the ion microprobe.

Field ionization

Intense fields, of the order of 10⁸ volts per centimetre, can be generated in the neighbourhood of sharp points and edges of electrodes, and these have been used as field ionization, or field emission, sources. This source is becoming popular in the study of organic compounds, which can be introduced as vapours and ionized in the intense fields. The ions are formed with very little excitation energy, so that there is little fragmentation of the molecular ions, making molecular formulas easier to determine.

High-frequency-produced plasma

An oscillator can create an electrodeless discharge in gas at low pressure within a glass tube. The plasma so produced is now a commonly used source for mass spectrometers but was first used in plasma-emission spectrometry (optical and near optical). Samples are introduced by means of a carrier gas, typically argon, and ions result as from the direct-current arc but with very few molecular ions and with the absence of impurities introduced by source electrodes. Such discharges are generally coupled by a coil to an oscillator having a frequency of about 20 megahertz and are called inductively coupled. Discharges can also be produced for specialized experiments in a device called a waveguide that is connected to a cavity magnetron, which has a frequency more than 100 times higher and significantly greater power. This is the basis for the inductively coupled mass spectrometer.

Photoionization

Instead of electrons, photons in the far ultraviolet region may be used, as they have sufficient energy to produce positive ions in a sample gas or vapour to be analyzed. A discharge in a capillary tube through which is passed a suitable gas, such as helium, is a good source for such radiation. Photoionization sources usually produce fewer ions than electron-bombardment sources but have advantages when the ionization chamber must be held at low temperature.

Resonance photoionization

All of the methods of ionization described above suffer from a lack of selectivity as to which element is ionized and depend either on the mass spectrometer for differentiation or on careful sample chemistry. A technique that achieves higher elemental selectivity is resonance ionization. In this scheme, a laser with adjustable wavelength irradiates the volume of gas from which the ions are to be extracted, exciting a transition from an atom’s ground state to one of its excited (high-energy) states. This strong excitation enables an equilibrium to be established between the two states, while at the same time other radiation—or sometimes the same radiation—takes atoms from the well-populated excited state to ionization. A slight change in the irradiating wavelength stops the equilibration and leaves the excited state unpopulated, which cuts off the ionization. The intense levels of radiation required are produced by pulsed lasers with very short duty cycles, however, making efficient sample use difficult. (The duty cycle is the ratio of the number of atoms irradiated in a given volume to the total number of atoms entering that volume.) For further discussion, see spectroscopy: Resonance-ionization spectroscopy.