Hand Held FTIRs Part II

Hand Held FTIRs Part II

Way back in March as part of my post-Pittcon blogging I wrote a piece about one of the hand held FTIRs I saw at the meeting, the TruDefender FT from Ahura Scientific (see March 29 post). At that time I promised a follow-up article on the second brand of hand held FTIR I saw at the show. Here it is as promised.

The second company I found that makes a portable hand held FTIR is A2 Technologies of Danbury CT. Their product is called the ExoscanTM. The Exoscan is 6.75" x 4.68" x 8.81" and weighs 7 pounds. This spectrometer scans from 4000 to 650 cm-1, and the Exoscan website states that it uses a ZnSe beamsplitter. The machine is capable of 4 cm-1 resolution. It has a diamond ATR sampling head and two different external reflection sampling heads, one capable of what they call "grazing angle specular reflectance". The manufacturer claims a battery life of greater than 8 hours using re-chargeable lithium ion batteries.

The website and literature on the Exoscan emphasize its use in measuring spectra of surfaces, such as contamination on metal and damage to carbon fiber composite parts used in aircraft. I found the staff at their Pittcon booth knowledgeable and helpful, and they sent me home with an armload of applications literature. According to their literature the Exoscan has software that allows it to be calibrated so it can perform quantitative analyses.

I would imagine the Exoscan is small enough and rugged enough to be used in the same applications as the TruDefender FT, that is hazardous materials identification and homeland security. But in what I consider a strange business decision, A2 Technologies has handed over the sales, marketing, and support functions for this application to Smith's Detection. This is such a potentially lucrative market that I would think the company would want it all to itself.

An interesting aspect of the Exoscan is that you can buy a "docking station" for it which turns it into lab instrument. In this case, it would work like a lab FTIR with a diamond ATR or specular reflectance accessory in it. What's neat about this option is that it gives users the flexibility to develop methods, perform routine lab analyses, and engage in field work with the same instrument. For more information on the Exoscan go here:
http://www.a2technologies.com/exoscan_home_page.html .