COURSE OVERVIEW

 This hands-on, highly-interactive course includes real-life case studies where participants will be engaged in a series of interactive small groups and class workshops. 

 

There has been unprecedented growth in measurement techniques over the last few decades. Instrumentation, such as chromatography, spectroscopy and microscopy, as well as sensors and microdevices, have undergone phenomenal developments.  Despite the sophisticated arsenal of analytical tools, complete noninvasive measurements are still not possible in most cases due to improper sample preparation and development. 

 

Sample development and preparation is often the bottleneck in a measurement process, as it tends to be slow and labor-intensive.  Despite this reality, it did not receive much attention until quite recently.  However, the last two decades have seen rapid evolution and an explosive growth of this industry.  This was particularly driven by the needs of the environmental and the pharmaceutical industries, which analyze large number of samples requiring significant efforts in sample preparation. 

Sample preparation is important in all aspects of chemical, biological, materials and surface analysis.  Notable among recent developments are faster, greener extraction methods and microextraction techniques.  Specialized sample preparations, such as self-assembly of analytes on nano-particles for surface enhancement, have also evolved.  Developments in high-throughput workstations for faster preparation-analysis of a large number of samples are impressive.  Considering all these, sample preparation has evolved to be a separate discipline within the analytical/measurement sciences. 

 

This course is designed to provide an overview of a variety of chemical sample preparation techniques and to bring the diverse methods under a common banner.  Knowing fully well that it is impossible to cover all aspects in a single course, this course attempts to cover some of the more important and widely used techniques for chemicals.