Basic principle from electrospray ionization to soft ionization mass spectrometry and development of ion source

Since the electrospray phenomenon was discovered, there is still an unsolved mystery about the prinple of generating charged analyte in the soft ionization phenomenon which represented by ESI. Scientists have described this process from different perspectives, but current theories still can not explain many experimental phenomena. At the same time, the slow development of the theory restricts the design and development of ion source, making it encounter many bottlenecks from the laboratory to commercialization. In this paper, the principle of electrospray ionization and soft ionization mass spectrometry is briefly introduced, and the application of ion migrate and transport mechanism is discussed, all are expected to be used in the development of ion sources.