A vaporization chamber for micro- or nano-sample introduction into a battery-operated microplasma: from rapid prototyping via 3D printing to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations

Ideally, a chemical analysis instrument should to be brought to the sample for (near) real-time analysis onsite (rather than bringing a sample to a lab for analysis, as is usually done). In this paper, this paradigm shift is addressed using battery-operated microplasmas. But, how does one introduce an initially ambient temperature sample into a low-power (~10 W) gas-phase microplasma? One way is by using an eletrothermal vaporization sample introduction and a vaporization chamber for introduction of micro- (and nano-size) samples into a microplasma. But then, how does one develop an “optimized” vaporization chamber? To reduce cost and time-delays, rapid prototyping (via 3D printing) and smoke experiments were used, as detailed in this paper. In the future, candidate designs will be evaluated using CFD simulations.

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