Jorge Pisonero, University of Oviedo, JAAS Advisory Board Member
The 10th European Workshop on Laser Ablation in Elemental and Isotopic Analysis was held in the popular city of Kiel, one of the main maritime centres of Germany and well-known for the annual Kiel Week, which is the biggest sailing event in the world. The local organizers of the workshop, headed by Jan Fietzke, Dieter Garbe-Schönberg and Thor Hansteen, did a wonderful job attracting more than 100 enthusiastic participants from 15 countries, in this way demonstrating the growing interest on the laser ablation analytical techniques.
The increasing number of papers reporting on laser ablation applications, in both elemental and isotopic chemistry, indicates that laser ablation has become a mature analytical tool that is widely used in many disciplines. In this sense, the bi-annual European Workshop is an adequate platform for a truly multidisciplinary arrangement. In the words of this year local organizers: “This workshop mirrors the present state-of-the-art in laser ablation and intends to bring together experienced and new users, theorists and practitioners, scientific users and manufacturers”. In fact, they managed it perfectly, and even the conference dinner (a wonderful cruise) kept the participants together for an intense exchange!
The Workshop was divided into 8 different sessions, including: fundamentals of particle formation and transport; calibration, standardization, reference materials; femtosecond laser ablation; instrumentation; applications in geochemistry; imaging, applications in life science; forensics, materials science, and nuclear research; and applications in biogeochemistry. Additionally, several invited lectures given on individual topics and lively discussions with the authors during poster sessions, contributed to the success of the workshop. The outstanding session chairmen, including: R. Hergenröder, B. Hattendorf, D. Günther, W. Müller, F. Vanhaecke, N. Jakubowski , D. Garbe-Schönberg and J. Fietzke, successfully organized exciting and thrilling debates at the end of the sessions, in the panel discussions. Moreover, the exhibition of instruments attracted all of the conference attendees, and new instrumentation as well as improvements in existing systems were presented.
Attendees to the 10th European Workshop on Laser Ablation, Kiel, Germany
Finally, I would like to point out that the next European Workshop on Laser Ablation (EWLA11) will be organized by the Research Groups of Laser and Plasma Spectroscopy and Analytical Spectrometry from the University of Oviedo, Spain. It will take place in June 2012 in Gijón, a lovely city on the north coast of Spain (by the Cantabric sea), which combines beautiful beaches, excellent gastronomy, and green mountains. We will try to organize an interesting, exciting and interactive workshop and we are looking forward to meeting you there!
Read recent articles in JAAS by Jorge Pisonero on the topic of laser ablation ICP-MS:
Numerical simulation analysis of flow patterns and particle transport in the HEAD laser ablation cell with respect to inductively coupled plasma spectrometry
Helmut Lindner, David Autrique, Jorge Pisonero, Detlef Günther and Annemie Bogaerts
J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2010, 25, 295-304, http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/B920905K
Critical review of GD-MS, LA-ICP-MS and SIMS as inorganic mass spectrometric techniques for direct solid analysis
Jorge Pisonero, Beatriz Fernández and Detlef Günther
J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2009, 24, 1145-1160, http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/B904698D
