Approaching the limit in atomic spectrochemical analysis

Abstract

to the paper by Alkemade (1). Methods Based on Detection of Charged SpeciesAmong the most sensitive of the techniques used for monitoring atoms are those which rely upon ionization. Included among such techniques are resonance ionization spectroscopy, commonly abbreviated RIS (2, 3) and laser-enhanced ionization (LEI), which employs the so-called opto-galvanic effect or OGE (4). Because these detection methods are discussed in detail in other articles in this series, they will be considered only briefly here. The interested reader is referred to the papers by Hurst and Travis, respectively.The principles involved in RIS and LEI are easily understood with the aid of Figure 1. In Figure 1 ( See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.

A Review of Near‐Field Laser Ablation for High‐Resolution Nanoscale Surface Analysis

“…Also, since only a few isolated atoms are ablated from the solid surface, near-field ablation significantly reduces collateral damage to the sample surface. Ultimately, with continual improvement in probe fabrication, and with the use of probeless approaches for generating the near-field region, ablation measurements might approach single atom detection (SAD) (31,59). For example, the thought that superresolution measurements might be made using NF-LA to extract single atoms or molecules in biological tissues or cells is attractive (60).…”