“…For 1 Also Department of Biochemistry. polymers of higher molecular weight, direct mass spectral analysis has not yet been effectively demonstrated, and the usual approach is to pyrolyze the sample, and then mass analyze the ions generated by electron ionization (El), chemical ionization (Cl), field ionization (FI), or field desorption (FD) (1, [25][26][27][28]. When additives are present in the polymer, thermal desorption is generally combined with El, Cl, or FI to generate ions for structural analysis (2,29,30).…”