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From the floor: Ocean Optics

OceanOptics

When I saw Ocean Optics (booth 927) promoting “the world’s coolest modular measuring suite that is like nothing you’ve ever seen before” on its booth, I just had to go and investigate. The product with this tag-line is the company’s new “Jaz” spectrometer - and I thought it lived up to the claim.

I was amazed when Marco Snikkers, the company’s commercial director for EMEA, handed me the Jaz. It’s got an embedded micro-processor, an OLED display, a slot for an SD memory card and Ethernet connectivity. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the product design because it has the look and feel of a PlayStation controller and is very simple to use - its just like using a digital camera.

The idea is that you hold the Jaz up to whatever you want to measure, view the spectrum on the display and press save. The display gives you a rough idea of what the spectrum looks like and then you can view it in more detail by transferring the spectral data over to your PC.

A simple menu system lets you choose the type of measurement you want to make: reflectance, transmittance etc. The design is also modular so, as Snikkers demonstrated on the booth, the Jaz can also be expanded to include a light source, rechargeable lithium-ion battery and up to eight spectrometer modules.

As well as the Jaz, Ocean Optics is exhibiting a laser assisted microwave plasma spectroscopy (LAMPS) system, which extends the capabilities of conventional laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS).

“Current LIBS technology ablates a minute portion of the solid or liquid sample and then analyzes the resulting plasma,” explained Snikkers. “LAMPS takes this a step further by employing a special microwave cavity to enhance the plasma discharage, which increases the sensitivity greatly.”

Last but not least, the company is also showing a new line of spectrometers that use a back-thinned CCD sensor which has an improved UV response. The products to look out for are the Maya2000 series and the QE65000 spectrometers.

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