Laser ablation microscope requirements

Mass spectrometric measurements of ions desorbed/ionized from a surface by a laser beam was first performed in 1963 by Honig and Woolston [151], who utilized a pulsed mby laser with 50 p,s pulse length. Hillenkamp et al. used microscope optics to focus the laser beam diameter to 0.5 p,m [152], allowing for surface analysis with high spatial resolution. In 1978 Posthumus et al. [153] demonstrated that laser desorption /ionization (LDI, also commonly referred to as laser ionization or laser ablation) could produce spectra of nonvolatile compounds with mass > 1 kDa. For a detailed review of the early development of LDI, see Reference 154. There is no principal difference between an LDI source and a MALDI source, which is described in detail in Section 2.1.22 In LDI no particular sample preparation is required (contrary to... 

Laser-ablation, inductively coupled-plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) is an instrumental technique in which a laser-ablahon cell and ophcal microscope supplant the spray chamber/nebulizer apparatus of a standard ICP-MS instrument. Subsamples of questioned material are ablated from a solid sample via laser (often a pulsed Nd-YAG tuned to 266 or 213 nm). Ablated specimens are transported in a stream of Ar to a plasma torch for ionization and mass discrimination as per solution ICP-MS. Only minimal sample prep is required, and few restrictions are placed on the nature of questioned solid samples (Brundle et al. 1992 Vickerman 1998). While laser spot sizes can be reduced to several micrometers, sensitivity is degraded as a result, and usual spatial resolutions are on the order of 10-100 pm. Matrix-matched standards are also necessary for accurate trace-element and isotopic quantitative analyses in LA-ICPMS. Depending on the quality of such primary standards, LA-ICPMS accuracies are typically 1-10%, with limits-of-detection in the parts-per-billion (ppb) range (O Table 62.1). 

Setup for Laser Ablation Coupling of a Laser to the Microscope Microscope Requirements... 

For any true microspectrochemical analysis a microscope and a dispersing instrument are needed. An essential feature of a laser microscope is that the objectives for both the observation of the specimen and for focusing the laser radiation must be suitable for ablation, vaporisation, and excitation of the material. The defining attribute of LMMS is the use of a high power pulsed UV laser ultimately focused down to the dil action-limited spot (0.5 ixm at 266 nm) to vaporise, atomise, and ionise a microvolume of a solid specimen in a one-step procedure. Laser microprobe mass analysers are typically equipped with Nd YAG lasers (1064 and 266 nm 5-15 ns pulses) or excimer lasers (XeF, 351 nm XeCl, 308 nm KrF, 248 nm with about 7-30 nm pulses). Power densities of up to 10 Wcm 2 are quite common organic compounds require attenuation to about 10 -10 W cm . By adjusting the laser power, desorption and ionisation can, to some extent, be selected over ablation and dissociation in the microplasma. 

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