Professor David Hahn of the University of Florida, Photon Machines Advisory Board member, won the prestigious Strock Award at the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies SCiX meeting this week. The award is given for a selected publication or series of papers of particular significance related to analytical atomic spectroscopy, by the New England Section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. Professor Hahn’s work related to particle-plasma interactions in LIBS spectroscopy has been the foundation of much progress in this area, including motivating the work of Photon’s Gregg Lithgow and Steve Buckley. More on the award can be found here (click). Congratulations to David from all of us at Photon Machines!
Hands-on LIBS course in Redmond, March 2-3
We’ll be hosting a hands-on LIBS course in Redmond on March 2-3. Come bring your hard-to measure samples, try our LIBS systems, and interact with Photon Machines staff. This will be a fun and informative mix of classroom and laboratory learning. More information: http://www.photon-machines.com/libs-class1101.html
LIBS 2010 a huge success
Just back from the LIBS 2010 conference last week in Memphis – a great meeting hosted by Jagdish Singh from Mississppi State University. With over 200 attendees, several short courses (including one by yours truly), 48 podium presentations, and about 100 poster presentations, there was more than enough to see, and there were lots of exciting things to talk about. One of the clear themes to many of the talks was the increasing importance of chemometrics in most LIBS applications. At the last International LIBS conference in Berlin, 2008, there were only a few talks that included a substantial portion of chemometrics in the analysis. Two years later, most papers included some sort of multivariate analysis in their arsenal. (Here at Photon, we use chemometrics on a daily basis). This was a good thing to see. In my short course I discussed both the use and misuse of chemometrics for LIBS. Another piece of interest to me was the emergence of more applications in industry playing central roles in process control and for key analyses. As LIBS gains acceptance, we will certainly see more mission critical applications. Overall, it was an exciting time for LIBS! The next US-based meeting will be NASLIBS 2011 in Clearwater, FL, July 18-20, … Continue reading
Detectors for LIBS
There are no right answers for LIBS detectors, only tradeoffs! Here we help you try to make the best choice by delineating the options by type of detector and by attributes. Continue reading
What is LIBS?
Provides a quick introduction to LIBS Continue reading
Seminar at Caltech: Discussion of LIBS plasma evolution with time
Last week I had the opportunity to give a LIBS seminar at Caltech to a group of astute engineers and scientists focused on analytical geochemistry. One major vein of questions and discussion that arose was surrounding the transferability of calibrations and the importance of experimental conditions. This is a deep topic indeed and all we can do here is touch on it, but I do believe that there are some easy ways to capture the main issues. First, realize that LIBS analysis proceeds as the result of two coupled but distinct processes. The laser ablation process removes material from the sample for introduction to the analytical plasma. Laser ablation is in and of itself a well-studied process, both by LIBS researchers and those who work on laser ablation ICP mass spec and laser ablation OES. We know, for example, that the laser may penetrate into some materials, and that in general shorter wavelengths and shorter pulses contribute to better ablation and less fractionation. The formation of the analytical LIBS plasma, typically in the gas phase above the sample in the ablation plume, occurs as the electron and material density in the plasma exceeds a certain threshold – the plume becomes … Continue reading
Photon Machines LIBS Blog, Volume 1, issue 1!
What this isn’t: 1) This is not a liberal political blog. 2) This has nothing to do with Nicola Tesla and his Photon Machines. 3) The prefixes Mad- and Womens- have nothing to do with this kind of LIBS. Welcome to the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) blog hosted by Photon Machines. Here we will delve, wade, and otherwise likely blunder in to all kinds of issues regarding the implementation of LIBS, both for laboratory and industrial uses. Our biases will be evident and our opinions carry all disclaimers – although they are informed by years of academic and industrial experience. Hopefully they will be helpful to you, our readers, as you explore the uses of LIBS for analysis of your particular measurement needs. The benefits of LIBS are many and will be periodically reviewed here. They include: Rapid analysis with minimal sample preparation (no digestion for those of you who practice ICP-MS!) Broadband spectra with many simultaneous elemental lines – allowing fingerprinting as well as quantification The ability to measure light elements that are difficult or impossible with XRF Measurements can be made at a distance (stand-off LIBS) Detection limits between 1 and 100 ppm for most elements All of … Continue reading
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