Mpx/hr LA-ICP-MS Imaging – UPDATE with Example Maps

Earlier this week we posted an initial announcement about breaking the 1 Mpx/hr barrier in LA-ICP-MS imaging and we promised to share some initial example maps and further details, so here they are…

Take one Teledyne Photon Machines IRIDIA 1000 Hz laser ablation system, set it up in FAST-PULSE mode and connect it to a Nu Instruments Vitesse ICP-TOF-MS and what do you get? Within minutes, Ciprian Stremtan and Lukas Schlatt were able to get extremely reproducible single pulse response (SPR) times of 0.45 ms for 238U at 10% peak maximum.

This ultra-low aerosol dispersion and is what underpins the ability to fully utilize kilohertz repetition rate imaging without lateral blur. It means that each laser shot is completely resolved and can be treated as a single pixel in an image. What is even more amazing is the stability and reproducibility of the SPR, as shown in the table below. Averaged single pulse response data for 238U from 2650 laser pulses on NIST 610 were analyzed with Teledyne Photon Machines HDIP software’s peak detection module and the relative standard deviations at 10% of the peak max. were found to be 0.35%! This is an extremely important characteristic for reliable high-speed imaging.

These performance characteristics, along with the high-speed of spectra acquisition of the Nu Instruments Vitesse, resulted in the following example images.

Murrina glass sample section

Example image:

Zircon Crystal

Example images:

We appear to have arrived in a new age. The benchmark is now single figure micron spatial resolution at >1Mpx/hr!

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