JAAS News

EWC 2011

(Carsten Engelhard) At the European Winter Conference Ryszard Lobinski (Laboratory of Analytical Bioinorganic and Environmental Chemistry, University of Pau, France) hosted a round table discussion on the current status and future of plasma-based analytical instrumentation.  Participants from instrument manufactures included Dirk Ardelt (Spectro Analytical Instruments), Kaveh Kahen (Perkin Elmer), Paul Neal (Thermo Fisher Scientific), Andrew Ryan (Bruker), and Steven Wilbur (Agilent Technologies).

Four major topics were covered: a) current challenges in plasma source instrumentation, b) how to choose a plasma source spectrometer, c) plasma source spectrometry and society: new markets and applications, and last but not least, d) teaching and training in ICP spectroscopy.

During an enjoyable one-hour discussion, it was stated that plasma-based analytical instrumentation has come a long way since its first introduction, but that there is still a lot of room for improvement.  In the future, it will presumably become more important to improve the absolute sensitivity, to reduce the required sample size, and to detect major constituents next to ultra trace elements with high precision.  Moreover, environmental considerations and consumer needs might require the reduction of carbon footprint, and the use of low gas flow or miniaturized plasma-based analytical instrumentation.

It is clear that an interesting future lies ahead of plasma-based analytical instrumentation.  The ideal analytical instrument that provides us with both atomic and molecular information with high precision and high sensitivity is still a vision. However, instrument manufactures as well as university researches are continuously working on the improvement of existing and the development of new instrumentation. There is still a lot to be done. Lets get started!

Award winner Rebeca Valledor with Prof. Nerea Bordel

The European Winter Conference is the traditional home of the Richard Payling Prize, which given to the best contribution on the topic of glow discharge spectrochemistry presented at that conference.  The 2011 award winner is Rebeca Valledor from the University of Oviedo, Spain.

Rebeca presented a poster entitled “Spatially and Temporally Resolved Studies of the Optical Emission in a Pulsed Radiofrequency Glow Discharge” (PC-052) in which she and her coworkers studied the temporal evolution of a pulsed RF glow discharge through spatially resolved spectroscopy, permitting them to deduce ionization and excitation mechanisms that are of critical importance in the design of a glow discharge source for mass spectrometry.

An advanced article just published online in JAAS (Valledor, R., Pisonero, J., Niels, T., and Bordel, N., “Spatial characterization of pressure-based plasma regimes in a radio frequency glow discharge by using optical emission spectroscopy“, Advance Article) provides a good preview of the work.

The award was sponsored by Horiba Jobin-Yvon, Spectruma Analytik GMbH, Tofwerk AG, Leco Inc., ThermoFischer, and nu Instruments.  Well done Rebeca!

In addition to a great scientific program, the European Winter Conference is known for its social aspects–and perhaps most prominent in this program is the ‘Hot Plasma Party‘ traditionally held on the eve of the first full day of the conference.  This year, the organizing committee took the conferees to the San Valero Winery outside of Zaragoza for dinner and dancing,  with the stipulation that the dress code include some red and black.  After a wonderful dinner, the organizing committee had a surprise planned: None other than Mr. Tom Jones!

Mr Sal Starr and Company entertain the conferees

Actually, this was Salvatore Starr–an ardent follower of Mr. Jones who sounds and looks a lot like Tom–and Salvatore puts on a show with just as much energy as Tom ever did.  You can tell from the pictures that a great deal of fun resulted.  I will not post any pictures that might embarrass anyone besides myself (and my good friend Jorge Pisonero).  Two things occur to me: First, somebody should setup a flickr account to share these photos- they are great; and second- somebody should organize something similar for the US and Asia-Pacific conferences.  These are too much fun!

Mr Jones?

Sal, Steve, and Jorge