JAAS News

(Carsten Engelhard, University of Münster, 16.09.2010)

Both the 22nd ICP-MS User meeting and the 9th Symposium on Mass Spectrometry Methods for Trace Element Analysis were held in Berlin, Germany recently. More than hundred-twenty participants from Austria, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland attended. The joint meeting was organized by the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), EUROLAB-Deutschland, and the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (DGMS). The local organizing committee was headed by Jochen Vogl, Wolfgang Pritzkow and supported by EUROLAB.

2011 European Winter Plasma Conference Travel Award Winner Marion Brunner (second on the left) with jury members Jochen Vogl (BAM), Patrick Klemens (AHF Analysentechnik), and Jörg Bettmer (Universidad de Oviedo), from left to right. Picture: EUROLAB-D, Birgit Nüsser

Jörg Bettmer, Jochen Vogl, Bodo Hattendorf, Norbert Jakubowski, and Thomas Prohaska chaired well-attended sessions on speciation analysis, instrumental developments, solid sample analysis, and isotope analysis. In the exhibition hall booths from instrument companies and suppliers as well as poster presentations by young scientist could be visited during coffee breaks.

One young scientist is awarded a prize for the outstanding oral or poster presentation during the conference. This year, the 2011 European Winter Plasma Conference Travel Award (sponsored by AHF Analysentechnik AG) was awarded to Marion Brunner (BOKU Vienna) for her talk on provenance analysis in foodstuff and green coffee beans by trace element and isotope fingerprinting with MC-ICP-MS.

The symposium on mass spectrometry methods for trace element analysis was first organized by Klaus G. Heumann in 1987. Since that time, ICP-MS users from academia and industry meet biannually to discuss hot topics in elemental and isotopic analysis. The next meeting will be held at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, in 2012.

Further reading:  http://www.eurolab-d.bam.de/ms-symposium/

Participants of the meeting. (Picture: EUROLAB-D, Birgit Nüsser)

Save the date!

2012 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry
Tucson, Arizona, January 9 – 14, 2012

The 2012 Winter Conference will again be held at the Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Resort in Tucson, Arizona, January 9-14. The planning for the 2012 Winter Conference is now underway and further details can be downloaded here.

Read the recently published JAAS themed issue from the 2010 Winter Conference, which was held in Fort Myers, Florida in January.

Jorge Pisonero, University of Oviedo, JAAS Advisory Board Member

The 10^th 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

The 2010 European Workshop on Laser Ablation was held at the Steigenberger Hotel in Kiel, Germany from 29 June – 1 July, 2010.
Each session showcased work on fundamental studies, method development and interesting applications, with plenty of time for discussion and debate.  Some of the exciting topics were:

• Fundamentals of particle formation and transport
• Calibration, standardization and reference materials
• Femtosecond laser ablation
• Forensics, materials science and nuclear research
• Applications in biogeochemistry

Plenary lectures were provided by Günter Huber of the University of Hamburg, and JAAS Editorial Board member Frank Vanhaekce of the University of Ghent.

Kiel, Germany

This conference was organized by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Christian-Albrechts-University and the Kiel Cluster of Excellence.  Around 110 international delegates participated in a program comprising 28 talks and 29 poster presentations.  The latest technological advances in LA-ICP-MS were also on display by 14 exhibitors.

The Scientific Committee decided that the next European Workshop on Laser Ablation will be held in Oviedo, Spain in 2012. Until then, don’t forget you can stay informed of the latest in laser ablation by signing up to the free JAAS e-alerts.

– Beatriz Fernandez

The 2010 International Glow Discharge Symposium is to be held in Albi, France from August 22-25, 2010 at University Jean-Francois Champollion.  The Symposium will unite both research scientists and analytical users to discuss the current state-of-the art methods and to define the scientific problems to be addressed as the technique advances.

More information can be found at the event website.

If your interests include glow discharge spectroscopy, this is the conference to attend!

Steve Ray, JAAS News Editor