MALDI Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

MALDI is a soft ionization technique used in mass spectrometry (MS) that produces rapid and efficient ionization of a wide variety of molecules (see Figure 1). MALDI uses a laser energy absorbing matrix to produce ions from molecules having molecular weights ranging from 100's to 1000's of Daltons with minimal fragmentation. It has found increasing application over the past 30 years, especially for the analysis of biomolecules, e.g. proteins, peptides, DNA, and polysaccharides, and other large organic molecules, e.g. polymers, dendrimers and other macromolecules. These molecules tend to be fragile, undergoing excessive fragmentation when ionized by more conventional methods.