The identification of food spoilage moulds and other microorganisms by using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is too slow for food industries and laboratories nowadays because of the manual inspection and highly professional needed. While this approach is suitable for small sample numbers, dealing with a large quantity of specimens require FTIR sample preparation to be carried out by a robotic system to increase the throughput but also to avoid cross-contamination. This paper presents a novel modular liquid handling robot to simplify and standardize FTIR sample preparation procedure. It is a single XYZ robot with 5 axes, mainly integrated with a: sonicator, centrifuge, 96-channel liquid

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The fabrication of highly characterized DT-filled, hollow glass microsphere targets is described. The DT is loaded by gas permeation through the glass walls at 420°C. The DT fill is nondestructively measured by counting the emitted x rays with a proportional counter. The counter system is empirically calibrated by individually crushing microspheres in an ionization chamber. Outer diameters are measured optically with a split-image eyepiece. Wall thicknesses and sphericities are measured by light interference. For a 40-J.L diam microsphere and I-J.L walls, we estimate our best absolute accuracies of measurement to be, o.d., ± 1.6%; wall thickness at any point, ± 10%; overall microsphere sphericity, ± 7%.

The benefits of a new electrochemical etching method for the controlled sharpening of sub-micron tungsten probes are demonstrated. The proposed technique only utilizes the insulating effect of the WO₄(2-) by-product which offers more practical ways of controlling the process parameters. The electrosharpening method was fully automated through the analysis of the process current, bulk coulometry, shadowgraphs, and time lapse microscopy. Tip radii smaller than 15 nm were maintained over a wide range of controlled lengths up to 4.5 mm with conic angles of less than 1°.

The method is described for the nondestructive inspection of small (<100-μm outside diameter) hollow thin (<2-μm wall thickness) transparent shells used as laser-fusion targets. Utilizing the interference properties of light, this method enables measurements of sphericity and absolute wall thickness to accuracies better than ±10%. The equipment and calibration procedure are discussed.

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