How Trimodal OF2i–Raman–ICP-TOFMS Is Changing Microplastic Analysis

The Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry took place this year from January 11–17, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. As part of the conference program, David Clasas, an associate professor at the University of Graz in Vienna, Austria, delivered a talk titled, “Honey, I Shrunk the Plastics – Tracking Down Pollutants at the Microscale” (1).

Clases is an analytical scientist born in Paderborn, Germany, whose research focuses on advancing atomic spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS). He earned his B.Sc. (2012), M.Sc. (2014), and PhD (2017) in chemistry from the University of Münster under Professor Uwe Karst (2). Following his doctorate, he was awarded a DFG Fellowship and joined Professor Philip Doble’s group at the University of Technology Sydney, where he later became a lecturer in chemistry (2). In 2021, he returned to Europe to take up a tenure-track position at the University of Graz, Austria, founding the NanoMicroLab. Promoted to Associate Professor in 2024, he now leads a team of eight researchers (2).

Clases’ research spans fundamental and applied aspects of inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), from laser ablation-ICP-MS to ICP-time of flight MS (ICP-TOFMS) and single-particle analysis. His group pioneers innovative hyphenated techniques integrating ICP-MS with optical trapping and Raman spectroscopy to probe complex particulate systems. He has published around sixty scientific articles and received numerous honors, including an ERC Starting Grant and multiple international awards.

In this interview clip, Clasas addressed two questions. He first discusses the trapping mechanism of the OF2i and how it improves downstream Raman and ICP-TOFMS measurements and also highlights the multimodal approach his team used to improve microplastic analysis.

This video clip is the first part of our conversation with Clases as part of our coverage of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. To stay up to date on our coverage of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, click here.

References

1. IASA, Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. IASA. Available at: https://iasa.world/winter-plasma-conference (accessed 2026-01-27).
2. Royal Society of Chemistry, David Clases. RSC.org. Available at: https://www.rsc.org/standards-and-recognition/prizes/winners/david-clases (accessed 2026-01-27).