Over the past 10 years, about 200 of the editors in attendance at Pittcon have selected the best examples of innovative and creative instruments showcased on the exposition floor. The sole criterion is that the nominated products appear on the exhibition floor for the first time. The editors caucus late Wednesday each year and vote for Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners. 2008 results are listed below, along with those that are awarded honorable mention - nominated, but not placed in the top three.
Gold: Bruker AXS Smart X2S
The Bruker AXS Smart X2S (Crystal-to-Structure) is a benchtop x-ray crystallography system for fully automated 3-D chemical structure determination. It is designed for use by chemists who have no special training in crystallography.
Traditional x-ray systems for 3-D structure determination are floor-standing, require significant infrastructure and typically are installed in specialist X-ray crystallography centers. The Smart X2S does away with the need for off-site crystallography service work or days-long wait for results.
The instrument, introduced in the second half of 2007, weighs less than 150 kg and requiring just 0.5 kW of standard single-phase AC power. It is suitable for a wide range of inorganic, organic and organometallic crystals.
The NLISIS Meltfit One is a new, reliable, and efficient method for coupling capillary columns in GC, GCxGC, CZE, and all other coupled-column capillary separation techniques.
The instrument was officially launched on Monday at Pittcon. The Meltfit One solves a “major nuisance” among analysts who have difficulties establishing stable and solid connections with the help of a small glass tube, which is positioned around the columns as “second skin”, leaving no room for dead volume or leaks. This is achieved by melting the glass and adding pressure at the same time.
The Bruker AXS S2 Picofox is a new portable ultra-sensitive benchtop TXRF system to quantify elemental concentrations from 0.1 ppb to % levels. TXRF was previously limited to floor-standing, large lab systems for semiconductor coatings and metrology.
For many applications the S2 Picofox is intended to be an enhancement of existing AAS or ICP-OES systems. A few advantages of TXRF compared to AAS and ICP-OES are:
simultaneous multi-element trace analysis, analysis of sample amounts in the nanogram or microgram range, portability fast in-field analyses, no matrix or memory effects, and low operating cost.
