SBIR Phase I: A Novel Microwave Based Plasma System for Analytical Atomic Spectrometry

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将产生关键的分析光谱数据和分析仪器优化所需的成功商业化的创新微波诱导等离子体（MIP）技术的原子光谱分析。该技术有望对痕量元素分析产生重大影响，为当前标准电感耦合等离子体（ICP）提供低成本，便携式，广泛适用的替代品。随着便携式技术目前接近30%的市场份额，价值40亿美元的全球原子光谱市场即将发生重大变化。拟议的MIP创新将通过提供第一个分析性能接近桌面单元的便携式解决方案，继续推动这一市场的增长。新的灵活性水平将允许在以前没有考虑的应用和位置进行痕量元素分析。这种差异化技术的社会影响使最终用户而不是大型实验室能够通过分析测量和现场监测样品中的低水平金属来量化其环境足迹。 在大多数发达国家和发展中国家，新的和更严格的环境和安全法规的不断引入将确保这一市场需求只会随着时间的推移而增长。 该项目的智力价值来自于一种创新的，多学科的和协作的方法，以应对在微波频率下创建纯感应等离子体的长期技术挑战。材料科学、电磁场、等离子体物理学和分析化学都在所提出的解决方案中发挥着重要作用，其中铜线圈被先进技术陶瓷制成的环所取代。 陶瓷材料在低频下几乎是完美的绝缘体，是微波介质极化电流的理想介质。这些电流在MIP中产生纯感应场，从而在微波频率下产生类似ICP的等离子体，其中较低的损耗、成本、尺寸和功率要求使得便携性成为可能。所得到的环形等离子体表现出与标准ICP直接相当的样品加载和分析区的鲁棒性。拟议的项目包括在一个小企业和一个著名的学术机构之间的合作，新的MIP的开发，表征和优化。该研究预计将产生可靠的MIP痕量元素分析的性能指标，并评估MIP的干扰或基质效应的敏感性，以验证便携式MIP光学发射光谱仪产品的拟议商业定位。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will generate crucial analytical spectroscopy data and analytical instrument optimization required for the successful commercialization of an innovative microwave-induced plasma (MIP) technology for atomic spectroscopy analysis. This technology promises to have a significant impact on trace elemental analysis by providing a low-cost, portable, widely-applicable alternative to the current standard inductively coupled plasma (ICP). With portable technology now approaching 30% market share, the $4 billion global atomic spectroscopy market is poised to undergo a major change. The proposed MIP innovation will continue to drive the growth of this market by providing the first portable solution with analytical performance approaching that of a tabletop unit. The new level of flexibility will allow trace elemental analysis in applications and locations where it would not have been previously considered. The societal impact of this differentiating technology empowers end users, rather than large laboratories, with a means to quantify their environmental footprint through the analytical measurement and in-situ monitoring of low level of metals in samples. The ongoing introduction of new and stricter environmental and safety regulations in most developed and developing nations will ensure that this market need will only grow over time. The intellectual merit of this project derives from an innovative, multidisciplinary, and collaborative approach to a long standing technical challenge of creating a purely inductive plasma at microwave frequencies. Materials science, electromagnetic fields, plasma physics, and analytical chemistry all play an important role in the proposed solution where a copper coil is replaced by a ring made of advanced technical ceramic. The ceramic material, an almost perfect insulator at low frequencies, is a nearly ideal medium for microwave dielectric polarization currents. These currents generate a pure inductive field in MIP, leading to an ICP-like plasma at microwave frequencies, where lower losses, cost, size, and power requirements make the portability possible. The resulting toroidal plasma exhibits robustness to sample loading and analytical zones directly comparable to standard ICP. The proposed project includes the development, characterization, and optimization of the new MIP in a collaboration between a small business and a renowned academic institution. The research is expected to generate reliable MIP performance metrics for trace elemental analysis and to assess the susceptibility of MIP to interferences or matrix effects in order to validate the proposed commercial positioning for a portable MIP optical emission spectrometer product.