A design for low-flow sheathless electrospray emitters.

An extremely simple design has been developed for producing durable sheathless electrospray emitters that give highly stable electrospray for unlimited lifetimes. The emitters can be fashioned from any style fused-silica capillary and are ideally suited for generating "all-in-one" microcolumn-emitter systems thus eliminating unwanted void volumes. The emitters give stable electrospray at low (30 nL/min) as well as high (1 mL/min) flow rates without the aid of nebulizing gas. Fabrication of these emitters (aka the "fairy dust" technique) does not involve the use of a metallized coating but rather the adherance of 2-μm gold particles to the capillary tip resulting in a robust approach to the problem of making an electrical contact with the electrospray solvent.