In March, Cerium Labs completed installation of a new Clarus 600S GC/MS with TurboMatrix 350 Automated Thermal Desorber from Perkin Elmer.  This instrumentation supports a number of applications including:

• Routine monitoring of airborne molecular contaminants in manufacturing environments.
• Identification of trace organic contaminants condensed on the surface of silicon wafers.
• Identification of organic contaminants outgassed from cleanroom materials and products (such as o-rings, gaskets, sealants, packaging, etc.).
• Identification of organic contaminants in ultrapure water, process chemicals and chemcial waste streams.
• Identification of extractable organics from fuel cell components.

The Clarus 600S has an extended mass range and faster mass spectra acquisition rates compared to our previous instrument.  The TurboMatrix 350 includes software controlled pnuematics and computer storage of an unlimited number of desorption routines.  Mass spectra of unknown compounds are identified by automated searching of the Wiley 8th Edition database which contains reference mass spectra of over 399,000 compounds.