"XPS Simplified" webinar – Understanding Metal Surfaces and Oxides: February 22, 2012

Thermo Scientific's latest surface analysis webinar covers the basics of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, with a special emphasis on how it can be used in the field of metal and oxide analysis. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a powerful technique for the chemical analysis of the surface of materials.
Date: February 22, 2012
Time:
Session 1 - 2:00pm (GMT)
Session 2 - 6:00pm (GMT)
Duration: 1 hour

Requiring little or no sample preparation and with the ability to directly quantify all elements except hydrogen and helium, XPS delivers chemical state information from the topmost few nanometers of the surface of a sample. Modern instruments, such as the Thermo Scientific K-Alpha, can extend analyses into chemical images of the surface, or reveal the composition of buried interfaces using depth profiling. These strengths allow scientists and engineers to measure passivation coatings, understand catalyst chemistries and develop bio-compatible coatings.

Register now for this webinar.

Seeing beef in a new light

The use of LEDs to save electricity is well known, but work within the US meat industry has thrown up extra advantages. The use of LEDs in refrigeration display cabinets has been shown to extend the shelf life of some beef products. The propensity of customers to discriminate against natural oxidation related meat coloration changes is a key factor in defining the shelf life of fresh meat. Scoring LED lighting against the normal fluorescent in the areas of preferred colour, taste and operating costs showed several advantages in using LEDs.

Eastern expansion

Continued confidence and growth in the far east semiconductor sector has been emphasised this month with AXT announcing further expansion of its compound semiconductor substrate manufacturing facilities in China. On a larger scale, it is reported that Samsung is increasing its 2012 investments to $41 Billion. The money will be used for everything from building factories to R&D, as well as mergers & acquisitions and hiring new staff. Samsung expects to take on around 26,000 new staff in 2012, taking its global total to about 376,000. The company has not specified the R&D development areas but analysts widely expect it to raise investment in mobile chips for phones, tablets and digital cameras and to accelerate the production of next-generation OLED (organic light emitting diode) flat-screen displays.

12 = 1 (or 0)

IBM scientists have used a scanning tunnelling microscope to make a magnetic storage device from only twelve atoms. By using antiferromagnetism to limit external magnetic fields, the IBM group have been able to encode a bit of data in just 12 iron atoms. They then placed eight of the 12-atom bits side by side creating a byte of data made of 96 atoms. Because no magnetic field strayed from each cluster of 12 atoms, the bits could be placed very close, creating a byte 100 times as dense as those typically used in today's hard drives. Apparently using less than twelve atoms is a problem. Smaller numbers of atoms are too unstable to act as bits, without neighbours to interact with and stabilise them, the atoms behaved like quantum objects that existed in multiple spin states at once.

An enterprising $10m

First seen in 1966, Dr McCoy's tricorder was a regular Star Trek gadget used to diagnose illnesses by scanning a body. A prize is now on offer for such a device. The Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE is a $10 million global competition to stimulate innovation and integration of precision diagnostic technologies, making reliable health diagnoses available directly to people in their homes. The winning device will be a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases. Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature. Ultimately, this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements. I might be suspicious if the prize is won by Vulcan Healthcare Developments Inc.