Abstract
Secondary Ion Mass spectrometry (SIMS) has been generally used in the field of material sciences. In recent years, it has also been applied for molecular imaging of biological samples. Nevertheless, molecular ions derived from the large molecules (more than 1 kDa) were detected with very low sensitivity. Plasma desorption mass spectrometry (PDMS) is known as mass spectrometry for large organic molecule. In PDMS, fission fragments bombard samples and the impact induces molecular ionization by electronic excitation. Large organic molecules are detected by using swift heavy ions in SIMS. In this work, 6 MeV Cu4+ we irradiated angiotensin II, a class of peptides. The intact molecular ions generated by swift heavy ion irradiation were analyzed by time‐of‐flight (TOF) measurement. The yields are compared with some other probe ions, bismuth or flurane. Swift heavy ion bombardment ionized large organic molecules more effectively than other probes. Therefore, high energy ion can be applied in high resolution molecular imaging.