Dr Steve Shuttleworth has worked in the field of ICP-MS and laser ablation since 1987 having started his career as an applications and development scientist in the UK at VG Elemental. Steve received his PhD from Manchester University in the UK in 1995 having applied laser ablation to the remote sampling and analysis of chemically and radioactively contaminated materials. During this time he also developed and patented a range of radiation detectors based on storage phosphor technology.  Following his PhD, Steve moved to the US where set up and ran one of the first high resolution ICP-MS facilities in the US at Washington University in St Louis. In 1998 Steve returned to industry joining Merchantek / New Wave Research as product manager for laser ablation systems. In 2002 Steve joined Thermo Electron as product specialist in the US where he further developed laser ablation for ICP-MS. In 2003 Steve joined GV Instruments as part of the ownership team which acquired the Micromass inorganic mass spectrometry product portfolio (stable isotope MS, noble gas MS, ICP-MS, TIMS) from Waters. From 2007 to 2010 Steve worked for Varian in the US, again as product specialist for ICP-MS. Since 2010 Steve has been with Photon Machines as Global Sales and Marketing director for laser ablation systems. Steve has an extensive body of scientific work with over 100 contributed peer reviewed papers, posters, and patents.

The combination of Laser Ablation (LA) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) provides an analytical tool capable of both high sensitivity elemental analysis and high precision isotopic analysis in a wide variety of matrices. Since its introduction in the mid 1980's LA-ICP-MS has been applied to a very broad range of applications across science in order to provide high spatially resolved chemical and isotopic information at the micron scale in the solid. The technique is now commonly used by researchers across a very broad range of disciplines. This talk will introduce the technique of LA-ICP-MS and discuss its capabilities and limitations. Recent improvements in both LA design and ICP-MS design will also be discussed. Calibration strategies will be reviewed as will the data processing techniques and packages currently available to the analyst. The analysis of a broad range of matrices will be described but will specifically include  elemental mapping of minerals and surfaces; using the technique to date zircons; analysis of biological tissues to map biomarkers; and the use of the technique in forensics studies.