Thermal lens spectrometry - still a technique on the horizon?

Abstract

In 1980’s thermal lens spectrometry (TLS) was still considered as a “spectrometric technique on the horizon” as one can also read from one of the textbooks on spectrochemical analysis of that time. Intensive development of thermal lens instrumentation and methods of chemical analysis and material characterisation has however resulted in substantial progress in this field, which is evident from important instrumental innovations and first commercial instruments (i.e. thermal lens microscopes -TLM) designed for lab-on-a-chip chemistry as well as from novel applications of TLS in various areas, where highly sensitive and rapid chemical analysis of complex samples is needed, including food safety and quality control, environmental analysis and biomedical diagnostics. This presentation is a review of most significant contributions and applications of thermal lens spectrometry, with emphasis on most recent achievements in instrumentation, which culminated into construction of novel optimized TLM instruments, capable of exploiting the tuneability of incoherent light sources and enabled novel applications particularly in micro-fluidics. Based on latest progress relying on bio-analytical assays and micro-fluidic flow injection with TLM detection we have also witnessed firs routine applications of TLS in analytical and diagnostic laboratories, which on wine side actually classifies TLS as a conventional and routine analytical tool, but at the same time opens new horizons for development and applications of this ultrasensitive and rapid spectrometric technique