R&D 100 Awards

The 40th of this series of annual awards programmes, recognising the most significant new products introduced over the previous year, was held in Chicago, USA, on 16 October. It is run by R&D Magazine and covers products over multiple industries. A number of spectroscopy products were recognised this year.

Ultrasonic Scientific picked up their second award of the year for the HR-US 101 high-resolution ultrasonic spectrometer, having earlier won the Pittcon Editors Silver Award. They have also been picked by SDI as the product most likely to be a commercial success. The HR-US 101 has overcome the low measurement resolution and the need for large sample volumes of previous ultrasonic spectrometers. Applications include the analysis of intermolecular forces, sample structures, composition, phase transition over a broad dynamic range of dilute and concentrated samples, a variety of samples and processes and reactions.

Bruker BioSpin picked up two awards: for their 600 MHz 1 mm TXI microlitre probe with z-gradient and for the 5mm TXI 800 MHz Z-gradient high-resolution cryonprobe. The 600 MHz NMR probe can measure 800 ng of sample and has a sensitivity six and a half times greater than its predecessor. The 800 MHz cryoprobe has a signal-to-noise ratio of 6000 : 1.

Thermo Nicolet’s FT-Raman view stage enables microsamples to be analysed simply, under software control, with a single interface controlling the spectrometer, focus and sample positioning.

SpotView from Remspec is a grazing-angle reflectance FT-IR accessory that can be sued at the end of a 5 m cable to detect and quantify organic films and coatings on solid surfaces.

Hitachi Medical Corp.’s ETG-100 is a non-invasive optical tomography system using NIR to provide an image of haemoglobin levels in the brain.

The MKS Pico leak detector from MKS Instruments is a portable helium leak detector weighing only 7.2 kg.

Büchi Award Winners 2002

The 2002 Büchi Awards were shared by two groups, one from Japan and the other from the UK. Yukihiro Ozaki, Jian-Hui Jiang and Roumiana Tsenkova (Kwansei-Gakuin University, Sanda, Japan) for their paper on “Principal Discriminant Variate for classification with multicollinear data” and Fiona Clarke, Mathew Jamieson, Donald Clark, Stephen Hammond, Roger Jee and Anthony Moffat (Pfizer Global Research & Development/School of Pharmacy, London) for their paper titled “Chemical Image Fusion. The Synergy of FT-NIR and Raman Mapping Microscopy” to enable a more complete visualisation of pharmaceutical formulations.

Büchi Award winners. L–R: Yuki Ozaki, Roumiana Tsenkova, Fiona Clarke and Tony Moffat.

The Büchi awards are made annually and presented at the Büchi annual meeting. nir.award@buchi.com.