Spectro has brought home the silver Pittcon Editors' Award home from Pittcon 2010. The award for innovative new products presented at the trade show is given by technical journalists from renowned scientific and technical publications. It's a rocky road to the award: First, 150 accredited journalists make their trade show rounds and sound out the offerings. Then each press representative nominates three outstanding products. A jury considers the preliminary selection and, finally, determines the three winners. "1,000 exhibitors compete for only three awards in the colors gold, silver and bronze," explains managing director, Manfred Bergsch. "We are very proud that we succeeded in winning this honor for the first time."

The Spectro MS, the worldwide first fully simultaneously measuring mass spectrometer with inductively coupled plasma, was distinguished with this award. The Spectro MS records the entire elemental mass spectrum from lithium to uranium with every analysis. This provides users with a much higher sample throughput rate and better precision and accuracy than when working with a sequential mass spectrometer.

Spectro MS: Technology
The Spectro MS delivers not only much more precise and repeatable results than a sequential mass spectrometer, but also measures a great deal faster. Simultaneous recording of the entire spectrum is enabled by a series of newly designed high-end components:

• A novel ion optic that is extremely efficient in transporting ions from the plasma into the mass spectrometer itself - while reliably removing neutral particles and photons from the beam.

• A double focusing sector field mass spectrometer with Mattauch-Herzog geometry. An electrostatic analyzer and a permanent magnet are utilized to direct the ions onto a focal plane - without additional scanning of the ion beam.

• An extremely powerful direct charge detector with 4,800 channels is located in the focal plane of the mass spectrometer and fully simultaneously records the entire mass spectrum from lithium to uranium from the continuous ion beam. Each of these channels is additionally divided into two separate detectors with different signal amplification. This enables the Spectro MS to achieve a large dynamic working range with which even extreme isotope ratios can be precisely determined.

The range of applications for the new Spectro MS is diverse. Spectro sees the most important application areas in research and development laboratories with extremely high sample throughput and high demand. With its precision, sample throughput rate and permanent complete information about the entire mass spectrum with every measurement, Spectro expects the Spectro MS to establish itself as the benchmark system for this application area.