It was a busy week at SIMS-24 in La Rochelle, France, with presentations from Abdul, Akhila, Matija, Alex and Nick. Congratulations to the Co-Chairs Alain Brunelle, Jean-Paul Barnes and their teams for a great conference!
Category Archives: Miscellaneous
Nature Reviews Publication
Together with fellow SIMS experts from around the world we have published a new Primer ‘Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry‘ in Nature Reviews Methods. The manuscript describes the operating principles of SIMS and outlines how the instrument geometry and operational parameters enable different modes of operation and information to be obtained. Applications, including materials science, surface science, electronic devices, geosciences and life sciences, are explored, finishing with an outlook for the technique.
You can view the formatted article here
New Collaboration: Multimodal Ion Beam Imaging facility
We are excited to announce a new collaboration with The Surrey Ion Beam Centre on a new £3m project ‘Multimodal 3D elemental and molecular imaging at the sub-micron scale‘ funded by the EPSRC. The project, led by Prof Melanie Bailey at the University of Surrey, will be achieved.by combining MeV ion beam analysis (X rays, gamma rays, backscattered particles) and water cluster Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) for the first time in a single instrument.
Happy 80th John!
We recently got together with some alumni and friends of the group to celebrate John Vickerman’s 80th Birthday with a meal and drinks in Manchester city centre. It was great to catch up with everyone. Congratulations John!
Publication – GCIBs for metal oxide analysis
Congratulations Abdul on your recent publication:
Secondary ion mass spectrometry analysis of metal oxides using 70 keV argon, carbon dioxide, and water gas cluster ion beams
Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B 41, 044007 (2023)
Fully-funded PhD studentships available
Search ‘Lockyer’ on FindaPhD.com to see current funded PhD opportunities:
We are currently recruiting to the following positions:
(BBSRC DTP) Shedding new light on the spatial lipidomics of disease progression using vibrational spectroscopy and mass spectrometry
POSITION FILLED
Matija awarded for SIMS 23 presentation
Congratulations Matija on winning the Rowland Hill Award for best student presentation at SIMS 23 in Minneapolis! Matija’s award-winning presentation was entitled ‘“Effects of Reactive Gas Cluster Ion Beams on Yields and Matrix Effects in SIMS”
Invited Presentation – Atomic Level Characterisation
Nick gave an invited talk at the 14th International Symposium on Atomic Level
Characterizations for New Materials and Devices (ALC’22) conference in Okinawa, Japan. The talk was entitled ‘Improved bioanalysis using GCIB SIMS and laser post-ionisation’ highlighting recent progress in fundamentals and applications of ToF-SIMS.
Keynote Presentation – British Mass Spectrometry Society
Nick gave the Keynote Presentation in the Mutimodal Session of the 42nd BMSS Conference in Manchester in September. The talk was titled ‘Multimodal Mass Spectrometry and Optical Imaging of a Neuroinflammation Model‘ and showcased our collaboration with the Medicines Discovery Catapult and colleagues in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.
Invited Talk – UK Surface Analysis Forum
Nick gave an Invited Talk at the UKSAF meeting at the Henry Royce Institute hub, entitiled ‘Advances in ToF-SIMS using massive gas cluster ion beams‘.
New Publication – Plants
Akhila has published a review article in the Journal Plants:
| Mass Spectrometry Imaging for Spatial Chemical Profiling of Vegetative Parts of Plants Akhila Ajith, Phillip J. Milnes, Giles N. Johnson and Nicholas P. Lockyer Plants 11 (2022) 1234 |
New Publication – Surface and Interface Analysis
Our recent work on cluster ion beam developments has been published in the Special Issue in honour of Martin Seah.
Sensitivity enhancement using chemically reactive gas cluster ion beams in secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS)
Matija Lagator, Irma Berrueta Razo, Thomas Royle, and Nicholas P. Lockyer
Surf. Interface Anal. 54 (2022) 349-355
Welcome Abdulrhman
The world urgently needs better battery technology to rapidly move towards a low‐carbon society. However, commercially‐available batteries currently do not store enough energy, have limited working lifetimes, and are too expensive to make large‐scale electrification viable. To design improved batteries, a better understand of chemical processes inside a battery during charging and discharging is needed. This requires measuring the flow of ions and electrons across multiple interfaces, buried within the battery. Abdulrhman’s PhD project will develop methodologies to study these interfaces using secondary ion mass spectrometry and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The project is co-supervised by Dr Alex Walton.
Congratulations Dr Danielle McDougall
Congratulations to Danielle on the award of her PhD! Her project ‘Diagnosing the Masses’ explored differentiation and drug interactions of prostate cancer cells and tissue using SIMS, DESI and Laser-REIMS mass spectrometry imaging. Thanks to Dr Adam McMahon from the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre and Dr Emrys Jones from Waters Corp. for their co-supervision.
BBSRC DTP PhD studentship
Applications are invited for a cross-faculty BBSRC DTP studentship entitled: Imaging inflammatory changes in tissues by mass spectrometry
This project will focus on the use of mass spectrometry imaging of biological tissues to explore and further develop their capabilities in the context of inflammation research. Inflammation is central to progression and outcome of a wide range of important conditions including stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease.
Details of the project, application process and eligibility requirements can be found here. Eligible applicants should contact the primary supervisor Adam.McMahon@manchester.ac.uk before making a formal application (deadline 22 Jan 2021)