A new method is described that combines the production of ions by laser ablation with a reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer for charge-transfer cross section measurements. This method allows a specific charge-transfer channel of an ion-neutral pair to be measured at energies of about 0.1 keV/amu. The metastable state ion fraction in the laser ablation ion beam is shown to be negligible. The charge-transfer cross section is determined by measuring the intensity ratio of the product ions to the parent ions after the charge-transfer reactions occur in the reflection drift tube. Verification on the apparatus is demonstrated through investigation of a single electron charge transfer of ground stateC2+ions andH2with the incident energy ofC2+at 3045.6(&sgr;=12.4) eV. Our measured cross section of6.90(±0.78)×10−16 cm−2is consistent with ground state measurements reported previously. Because of the versatility of the pulsed laser ablation ion source, this facility can be used to examine the cross sections of a variety of multiply charged ions from refractory or gaseous elements. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.