ATOMIC SPECTROMETRY VIEWPOINT Scott Tanner SCIEX 55 Glencameron Road Thornhill Ontario L3 T 7P2 Canada During Dr Tanner’s (S.T.) attendance at the Fourth Durham Plasma Conference September 11-16 1994. Dr Robert Hutton (R.H.) a member of the JAAS Editorial board and Brenda Holliday (B.H.) Senior Assistant Editor of JAAS interviewed him about his work on inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Scott Tanner and Robert Hutton B.H. the birth of JAAS and we are hoping to run a series of interviews with leading atomic spectroscopists to hear their views on the current scene. Could you just giue me some background as to your education how you came to work in the field and how you ended up working at SCIEX? S.T. and graduate studies at York University in Toronto where I worked with Diethard Bohme and John Goodings on ion-molecule reaction kinetics and flame ion mass spectrometry.The spatial profiles of ions in the flame were interpreted through the dynamics of ion-molecule chemistry to yield a diagnostic for the neutral flame chemistry leading to the formation of soot. After graduation I joined SCIEX ostensibly to start work on a new project combining a high temperature plasma with a mass spectrometer as a new tool for elemental analysis. At that time the plasma was expected to be a microwave-induced plasma. Unfortunately or fortunately I was waylaid for the first few years into developing methods for determining volatile organics in air and mobile organic analyses eventually spending about 4 years working with the EPA to develop methods for rapid on-site dioxin analyses in Missouri and New 1995 is the 10th Anniversary of I took both my undergraduate Jersey.In this work I developed a new type of direct air sampling glow discharge ionization source. It became apparent that the source was sufficiently intense that the ion optics were space-charge-limited and I began developing a model to calculate space charge. At about the same time I began hearing from my colleagues about problems that they were having with what had become an ICP-MS instrument and realized that in fact their space charge problems were considerably more severe than were mine. The space charge model was adapted for the ICP source and so I really came back into the ICP-MS world through the back door of ion optical calculations.Since then I have tried to further understand the nature of space charge with the hope of solving the problem for ICP-MS. SCIEX of course is a spin-off company from the University of Toronto having been founded by Barry French Neil Reid and Adele Buckley of the Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). We have always had a close relationship with UTIAS. About 6 years ago now the Ontario provinical government introduced a programme known as the Ontario Technology Fund which was intended to improve technology development in Ontario and specifically to improve the relationship between universities and industry. As part of that contract with the government several of the scientists at SCIEX were then seconded to the university. As a result I’ve been working at the university now for the past 6 or 7 years in a little bit more free-form research than might normally be anticipated in industry.With Barry’s recent retirement from the university we may want to re-evaluate how we deal with the university R.H. Does that mean that you will move back to the factory to the plant? S.T. No. Actually SCIEX is building a new plant considerably closer to my house in fact. However I’ll probably still be staying at the university. It is a good environment to work in being less restrained than the factory might be. R.H. Less telephones? S.T. Definitely. At the factory I still get calls about dioxin analyses the details of which I find difficult to remember now. R.H. One of the aspects that is less well known about you is your gymnastics expertise-tell us a little bit about that.S.T. As a youngster I was in a demonstration acrobatics corps and got serious about gymnastics in my teens. I originally chose York University as my school based on their excellence in gymnastics in Canada. Throughout my varsity career we were the national champions. It’s interesting that most of my team-mates were studying the sciences and a surprising number of us went on to graduate school. By 1975 I was with the national team. At various times I was one of the best on Pommel Horse Vault and Parallel Bars. My relatively short fingers meant I had to struggle a bit to stay on the Horizontal Bar and Rings; that was before looped handgrips were in use. At the 1975 Nationals which were the first of the Olympic Team Trials I suffered a rather severe knee injury which put an end to my aspirations for the 1976 Olympic team.R.H. Did you actually think you could get into the Olympics? S.T. Well yes. B.H. So was it ever a choice between gymnastics and chemistry? S.T. Yes well having not succeeded in 1976 the decision now was whether to persist in gymnastics until the 1980 Games or go on to graduate school. Choosing school was probably the best decision I ever made because the 1980 Olympics were cancelled for the West at least because it was held in Russia and that was politically incorrect in those days. My colleagues on the national team I’m afraid forfeited a lot of the rest of their careers for that competition and I feel very bad for them. So I guess in the long run it was a good choice to put school ahead of gymnastics at that time.R.H. S.T. summer for 2 weeks at the Canadian You don’t coach or anything now? Oh I do a bit. I coach every Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry January 1995 Vol. 10 9 NAdventure Camp in northern Ontario. It’s a great camp specializing in waterskiing and gymnastics. My wife and I coach for 5$ hours a day and enjoy the remainder of the days. I was also involved for a long time with the national technical committee for the Canadian Gymnastics Federation acting as national judging chairman for several years. I learned more about politics there than I wanted to and that I am really not suited for politics! R.H. What did you do after that? S.T. Gymnastics gave way to three and a half years of marathon running.That’s where you learn to push yourself hard and work for a long time at intense effort. Guess that comes in handy now in the laboratory! I helped found the Maple Leaf Runners club and coached at marathon clinics. My best time in six marathons was 2:47:13. R.H. Have you sufered any injuries because of it? S.T. Not really. Actually the running is necessary to maintain sufficient muscular development so that my knee doesn’t incapacitate me. It’s probably a sentence for life now. R.H. Have you been running while you’ve been here? S.T. I ran once on Sunday. Yesterday it was too cold and wet and this morning I had no ambition to get out of bed! R.H. Europe. Would you consider yourself a Europhile in any way? S.T. I’d love to consider myself a Europhile but no I’m not.I clearly have an affinity for England and for Germany probably because those are the countries I’ve been in most often. I have yet to see some of the other interesting countries. Maybe with time I’ll have a chance. R.H. You haven’t travelled any more in Europe than just Germany and the UK? S.T. Not other than the Winter Conference in Spain last year. While a gymnast I travelled through Yugoslavia Rumania and Bulgaria but that was 22 years ago now. So no I haven’t had the opportunity to see the others yet. This is a plug. Who wants me to come where?! B.H. Does your acceptance of invitations depend on where SCIEX thinks the the market is? S.T. I would like to think not. Primarily because I’m not a marketing type of person. As much as speaking at all might be perceived as marketing I try and am encouraged to play the technical role instead.You’ve spent quite a lot of time in B.H. I always find it difficult myself to appreciate the role of scientists employed by instrument companies. How do you break down your role into a company man and being a scientist? S.T. I’m afraid that some academics don’t really understand the distinguishing constraints either. We do a fair amount of fundamental science at SCIEX although it is usually framed by a need for product development. I suppose the major constraint of the dual role is which aspects of the science we can freely discuss in public. R.H. either is what departments people work for. I work for marketing. S.T. Much of our marketing is now done by the joint venture Perkin Elmer-SCIEX.From the scientist’s point of view it’s a nice arrangement because we can do the science and product development without having to then go out and support it with the marketing role. Particularly nice is to be relieved of the service role which I used to have to do before the joint venture came around. What a lot of people don’t realize R.H. You’ve been working now with ICP-MS for quite a long time and are considered as a leader but where would you see the future for the technology? S.T. I was afraid you were going to ask that! The future of ICP-MS-well it’s nice to see good equipment becoming available. I’d have to separate the future of ICP-MS into a couple of areas. One is the development of the base instrument itself. A second is the way that we use that instrument and probably the third is what it is going to be replaced by.I’ll start with the first one. The development of the ICP-MS instrument itself is driven by a number of points of view. From the marketing point of view the sensitivity will probably always remain an issue. Whether or not it’s a real issue for doing real life analyses sensitivity remains an important benchmark for the success of an instrument. I would like to see more interest placed in improving ion transmission efficiency and matrix effects primarily because I perceive from my rather naive analytical point of view that if you can solve the matrix effects then you can analyse real samples. The same goes for mass bias. Of course from my experience everything related to space charge can be improved.That’s the short of it. Resolution of isobaric interferences non-spectroscopic interferences all the standard things we’ve been hearing for years that have not yet been solved. I think the solution may have much to do with the way we introduce the sample. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) should become important and it should provide an interesting challenge from the technical point of view. The resolution achievable with CE and the small sample size required should resolve a number of issues. So I’d like to see CE come along. I guess I have to get onto how we’re going to go beyond the ICP-MS. How will we replace the ICP or what will replace ICP-MS? I think that both of those are blue sky. The ICP is an ideal ion source for handling high concentrations of elements because its performance is not substantially affected by the matrix itself. But it has the deficiency that it may be too efficient at ionization and therefore it puts more strain on the mass spectrometer.Gary Hieftje has been saying that we should separate the atomization and the ionization stages; that’s certainly one approach to it. B.H. Would that lead to more complicated instrumentation? S.T. I hope not. My wish is always to go to the simplest configuration possible. We started off very complicated. Mass spectrometers have always been perhaps unnecessarily complicated devices. Primarily this is a result of the history of the development of mass spectrometry. Also some developers have read ion optical books like Harting and Reed and have adopted a large number of ion optical components for their various attributes.I think the idea is to make these things more and more simple from the mechanical-electricaI point of view. The computer can make it appear simple because virtually anything can be autotuned so there may be less incentive to be creative in simplicity. My personal preference would be to not take too much advantage of the computer. I don’t want to use the computer to allow the developer to stop developing simpler systems. It would be best to use the computer to control yet simpler mechanical systems. R.H. Do you think there is still a case for manually controlled instruments-a scientist’s instrument? S.T. Absolutely. Now when you’re an instrument manufacturer your targets have to have a broader application range so we’re looking for more and more automation but the researcher has to have flexibility. He may be able to have that flexibility in the same automated instrument or he may have to build his own.As a researcher I would prefer not to have my computer control the instrument because I want to know exactly what the instrument is doing. A lot of things can be hidden by computer control and can really disrupt the fundamental information that you could be getting from your instrument. 10 N Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry January 1995 Vol. 10R.H. Tanner’s career? S.T. Well last week I got a promotion! I’m now just one step away from that hallowed realm of Principal Scientist which is of course one of my goals. I’m not sure where else I’ll be going.We’ve introduced the ELAN 6000 this week which is kind of a milestone for me. I wonder what the next step will be. Of course we have a number of research programmes in the lab aimed at solving the remaining problems and looking towards the next generation of instrumentation. It really requires good input on what the customers are going to want in the next round. I had thought of leaving ICP and getting into alternate ionization sources or maybe even moving into other types of analyses. I think however that for the time being the future holds continued involvement in ICP-MS. It’s also quite exciting as we start promoting the ELAN 6000 and I confess that there is some personal pride involved in that as well so it’s an opportunity to cash in a bit on some prior work.R.H. Is this where you become a marketing person? S.T. I suppose so yes. R.H. So overall Scott Tanner will stay in ICP-MS for the foreseeable future? S.T. I think I’ll stay in ICP-MS. I would also like to simultaneously branch out and do some weird things unspecified weird things at the moment. R.H. Do you think you have the flexibility within SCIEX to do that? S.T. Actually yes we do. We’re pretty fortunate in having a fairly generous perception of what R&D should be doing at SCIEX. We are given a mandate to proceed along certain lines but we’re also given the flexibility to ‘blue sky’ things significantly. And as they say evenings and weekends are still available! B.H. that SCIEX has to spend on research? You were talking about ‘blue sky’ stuf S.T.The Ontario Technology Fund really facilitated that because after the contributions from the joint venture were included with the Ontario Government contribution there was a substantial investment made in research development and engineering. One of the objectives of that was to make SCIEX sufficiently successful that it could maintain that sort of funding on its own. That is now becoming a reality so financing the research has not yet been a concern. WhatS the next step for Scott What about the amount of money R.H. Does this mean that you wouldn’t consider going back to university as a full time academic? S.T. No. That’s been seriously considered over the last while. My most recent thinking on that is to determine what the potential gains of an academic position are.I think given the flexibility of my current position both the flexibility that SCIEX provides and the flexibility that working at the University of Toronto provides that there’s probably not a lot to be gained by becoming a professor. In fact there is a lot to be lost in that now I don’t have to worry about my funding and as a professor that would probably be my primary concern. So I think that someday I might consider something other than SCIEX but not right now. R.H. Do you foresee a situation arising where you could hold a position at SCIEX and a position at University? S.T. That has come up; in fact last week was the last time that it came up. I suspect that there is a chance that we might make an arrangement for an adjunct professorship or something.It might be an attractive option although I think that taking an adjunct professorship probably simply adds to the workload! Nonetheless it might be an opportunity to fulfill ambitions in both directions. B.H. teaching? S.T. It usually does but I’m not sure. I guess that I would have to say that it might be desirable at some point to have an adjunct professorship even if it just helps to decide what I’d really like to do. B.H. the moment about the lack of the number of people taking pure science chemistry or physics the numbers are falling away badly. Is this the same in Canada? What can working scientists do? Can they contribute to halt the trend? S.T. Well that’s a little outside of my experience in Canada. But I can say that there is a lot concern about losing scientists from Canada after graduation primarily to the United States.There’s been a vigorous effort on the part of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada to encourage Canadian scientists to stay in Canada which is actually how I ended up at SCIEX. NSERC offers an Industrial Research Fellowship which sponsors recent research graduates in industry for a period of up to five years. It certainly makes it easier for small industries to get some research strength and it also encourages those scientists to stay in Canada. It’s also why NSERC encourages industry- Would that involve you in any There’s a concern in Britain at academic relationships. While the students are coming through the university system they are exposed to the industrial environment to show that there is in fact some high technology industry in Canada.As for the students I can’t say that I’ve seen any evidence of a decrease in attendance in technical studies. In fact if anything I’d say that there’s been an increase. Though I might say that from my old school perception perhaps I would like to see more emphasis placed on fundamental science rather than the applications of science. B.H. Well I think that all three of us would say that science has been good to us and we have enjoyed being scientists. How can you get this message across to young people? S.T. money and job satisfaction. I’ve got to admit that job satisfaction is much more important to me than financial gain so long as my boss doesn’t hear that! R.H. I think that we also have a situation in the UK whereby insecurity in the science profession may be brought up because of the recession like pressures and people don’t want to move into the sort of area where they don’t know what will happen.I don’t know if there’s a secure job or even a place for a scientist. S.T. Basically if you aren’t conversant in the sciences and the technologies then you just aren’t going to fare well in the future. You just won’t be a participant in the future without a technological base you’ll be a bystander. B.H. There are more attractive sciences that they want to go into. People are moving into computer work because it is seen as generating lots of money and they are not moving into the fundamental science field because it’s not seen as doing that well. S.T.into biotechnology which is a fascinating field. But it takes an enormous amount of effort to get to the point where you can be a developer in that field. R.H. Canadian national. Is this a reasonable observation? S.T. Yes I’m a big fan of Canada so much so that I think consideration of long term tenure elsewhere would be difficult. You must be commenting on the election in Quebec a couple of days ago. I’ve not yet heard the results though I’m certain that the separatists won. Yet it is my expectation that Quebec will remain within Canada. I’d be incredibly disappointed in a break It’s a trade-off between lots of There is an obvious movement You come across as afiercely Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry January 1995 VoE. 10 11 Nup of the country which is what separatism in Quebec would eventually lead to.There are too many ramifications for our way of life that deserves to be maintained and Quebec does not stand to gain from separating. It really is a wonderful place; we have a good mix of cultures a little of Europe everywhere in Canada. R.H. to split up. I think it’s beautiful. Quebec City is so much like Paris very old and full of history. S.T. Quebec is a great city; highly recommended to visit. There was a I can see why the Quebecois want referendum several years ago on the constitution of Canada. The objective of the referendum was to bring Quebec into the constitution and to bring the remaining provinces into agreement. One clause that was proposed for the constitution recognized the distinct status of Quebec. I gather that it was that clause which eventually caused the referendum to fail. Where we stand now is that we don’t have a completed constitution for Canada and there may be some mistrust between English- speaking and French-speaking Canadians as a result of the referendum and the ensuing discussions. God knows we have to work out these differences in order to save our larger distinctly Canadian society. At this point actually the tape ran out and we realized that we were late for the start of the next session. This is roughly how we ended . . . R.H. Look the afternoon session’s already started and I wanted to catch JoaquinS talk. S.T. Right and so do 1. Thanks Brenda for the lunch and for the opportunity to talk. And thanks to you Robert for taking it easy on me! B.H. And thanks to you both. 12N Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry January 1995 Vd. 10