LIBS-System: Delivery to Mainz

Niklas
Last updated on Aug 19, 2022 2 min read
Project

Delivery of our new LIBS-System to Mainz!

We are finally able to house our LIBS-System in our labs in Mainz. Of course this did not keep us from doing first analyses ( see our earlier blogpost), but those made us even more excited to finally have the it with us for good.

The system arrived in a humongous crate with almost as much packaging as instruments to keep it all together for the ferry-ride from Crete and the long way on the truck from Athens. Image of Danai and crate

With the system came our two collaborators Panagiotis Siozos and Victor Pinon. They have been essential in putting together the system from the beginning and developed it from a slow and clumsy setup that I put together to the fast and efficient machine it is now.

First test runs on limpet shells showed how well the system works in its new environment.

The system in action. We stabilised a shell section with aluminium foil and blue tack on the xyz-stage. The laser beam itself is invisible (IR), but you can see the plasma being created on the cutting surface.

This is one of the first archaeological shells from Franchthi, that we ran and were really happy to see a good and consistent growth with predictable changes in Mg/Ca.

For now it will be housed in the old XRF-lab until the institute’s new building will be finished in October. Then we get to make use of the NEW XRF-lab, with a bit more space for other microscopes and for prepping stable isotope samples, while running the LIBS-analysis in the background.

LIBS SEAFRONT

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