JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL ATOMIC SPECTROMETRY APRIL 1992 VOL. 7 19N Conference Report 1992 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry January 6-1 I 1992 San Diego CA USA It’s the first week in January and it’s an even-numbered year so the gathering crowd of over 400 people must be heading for another Winter Plasma Conference somewhere nice in the Americas! The venue was a return visit to the San Diego Princess Hotel in California-where better to soak up some winter sun meet old friends and learn about what’s new. Actually this time Mother Nature decided to play a trick on us by ending a six year Californian drought with several inches of rain just when we arrived. Going to the opening poster session where Wellington boots would have been the footware of choice and warm air blowers attempted to keep a leaky tent warm gave a whole new meaning to ‘sunny’ California! It could not last of course and the second half of the week reverted to the normal sunny weather mode.The truly international nature of the conference becomes obvious when you scan the list of participants-nearly 400 people from 26 countries this year. The traditional format of invited lec- tures from the leaders in the various fields shorter papers from other work- ers and discussion groups for the inter- Ramon Barnes Conference Organizer ested was followed. Several poster sessions (in that notorious tent) and an instrument exhibition (where the sa- lesfolk worried about the weather af- fecting their products or themselves) completed the show organized as ever by Ramon Barnes and his team.Basically the days were split in half each half being dedicated to a specific topic. To cover all the lectures in the Poster session L to R Bonner Denton Joe Brenner and Judith Egan depth they deserve is impossible but a quick summary of the more interesting points from a personal point of view would be (i) ultrasonic nebulizers have another re-birth; (ii) the cry for clever software for diagnostic pur- poses; and (iii) how ICP-MS monopo- lizes academic interest at the present time. Also the colourful explosion of false colour computer grahics from Gary Hieftje promises that future con- ferences will no longer be just boring black and white affairs. The opening address by Velmer Fas- sel (Iowa State University IA USA) reminded us how far things have come from the early days of plasmas with some 9000 ICP-OES and 275 ICP-MS systems claimed to be working around the world.He also said that two thirds of the detection limits obtained for ICP-MS were no better than those of ICP-OES unlike the general impres- sion one gains. Still we did hear later on about ‘parts per quadrillion’ for the first time I can remember from an ICP-MS person. How do they cope with the contamintion problems at that level? I ask myself. Sample introduction still taxes everyone and this seems to be the reason ultrasonic nebulizers are back again. Rick Browner (Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta GA USA) claimed that too much water was the controlling influence hence desolva- tion or solid sampling was the way forward. A claim that triple in-line condenser-heater units were required leads to nightmare visions of the size and complexity of the resulting hard- ware.Jean-Michel Mermet (University of Lyon France) presented an excellent lecture on plasma diagnostics and the need for this became a common call from users to manufacturers as the conference went on. In fact Horlick coined for me the phrase of the conference which summed up what the future products need to be-Faster Smaller Smarter. Paul Boumans (Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven The Nether- lands) offered a unique view that research had broken down over the years into the ‘empirical’ branch and the ‘theoretical’ branch. The ‘empiri- cals’ had gone off and found practical solutions to many problems leaving20N JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL ATOMIC SPECTROMETRY APRIL 1992 VOL.7 the ‘theoreticals’ to themselves. The latter as represented by Mike Blades perhaps had finally got to the point of being able to explain most things but the final re-joining of the branches still had to occur. At this point as people begin to flag we have the conference dinner to look forward to. We were promised a cruise on a paddlewheel riverboat but the more suspicious of us were heard to observe that the boat appeared to move rather faster than the paddle- wheel turned. Perhaps the diesel- powered screws had something to do with it! Anyway a cruise up and down Mission Bay while eating and drinking with recently acquired friends ended all too early for some. Back to business next day it was the turn of the MS contingent to entertain us as they attempted to come to terms with those non-existent interferences! What also became clear is that ICP- MS is now being married to other techniques to produce the ultimate instrumentation.Laser ablation flow injection supercritical fluid chromato- graphy were all mentioned. The final MS event was a look forward by Gary Hieftje (University of Indiana IN USA) where everything seemed to point towards the ‘most expensive instrument in the world’-provided you have a cool $0.5 million to spend that is! Glow discharge also seems to be making an increased impact again and could be one answer to the solid sampling question. The final events covered the use of the different plasma techniques for chromatograpy detec- tors. When the conference had finally finished we were left to reflect on the lessons learned information and hints acquired and the suggestions for future activities all that’s required in fact for us Europeans to prepare in time for Granada in 1993 and to polish up by the time of sunny Florida California Hawaii (or where ever) in 1994. T. C. Dymott Unicam Limited York Street Cambridge CBI2PX UK