Safe, low cost MP-AES analysis of total metal content of a plant-based reference material following microwave digestion is presented. Elements that are difficult to analyze by FAAS such as B and P were included, with all data acquired in a single run. Accurate determinations over a wide concentration range and with better detection limits and sample throughput compared to FAAS were obtained.
X-ray analytical techniques, spanning X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), are becoming faster, more portable, and more energy-efficient, with microbeam XRF spot sizes once exclusive to synchrotrons now available on laboratory benchtops.
Atomic spectroscopy has quietly gone from counting elements in bulk to counting single nanoparticles, imaging tissue at the micrometer scale, and reading Martian rocks from several meters away. The instruments got smaller, the software got smarter, and the questions they can now answer got a lot more interesting.
UV–vis absorption spectroscopy, one of analytical chemistry's oldest and most accessible techniques, remains foundational to cutting-edge science, underpinning the Nobel Prize-winning discovery and synthesis of quantum dots and continuing to evolve through ultralow stray-light optics, chip-scale sensors, and AI-integrated process analyzers.
