Can I use the electrospray source without the neutralizer?
One of the 3480C’s unique design features is that it provides mainly uncharged aerosol, unlike the electrosprays used for mass spectrometry, paint spraying, and crop dusting. Electrospray fundamentally produces droplets charged to about half the Rayleigh limit (see e.g. Hinds, Aerosol Technology, Wiley-Interscience, 2nd edition, p. 334 for a discussion of this limit). If you remove the polonium neutralizer from the electrospray, the droplets will remain charged, evaporating and undergoing Rayleigh disintegrations which change the size distribution. The resulting highly-charged fine particles are highly mobile and are attracted to any conductive wall, so very few macroions are output from the source with no neutralizer in place.
