Parallel flow ablation cell for short signal duration in LA-ICP-TOFMS element imaging
Neff, C.; Becker, P.; Gunther, D.
Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 2022.
DOI: 10.1039/D1JA00421B
In this study, researchers from ETH Zurich describe a new parallel flow laser ablation cell (PFAC). With this PFAC, a new record of 0.25 milliseconds is set for the washout time, which is the time it takes for the laser-ablated aerosol to be transported into the mass spectrometer.
In combination with an inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ICP-TOFMS), such as the TOFWERK icpTOF, which measures the full mass spectrum simultaneously, this enables multi-elemental imaging at a rate of > 1000 pixels per second. This would allow to acquire a 1 megapixel image within < 20 min and thus increase the sample throughput dramatically.
