Produced in Partnership with Avantes BVReviewed by Maria OsipovaAug 21 2024
For more than 120 years, agriculturalists have recognized the importance of soil testing, specifically elemental analysis, to ensure a healthy and productive yield of crops. Typically, this process required randomly selecting samples of soil across a representative region of the field and sending them off to a laboratory to be analyzed using chromatography, mass spectrometry, and other wet chemistry techniques. While precise, this approach is extremely time-consuming and costly.
Fortunately, new advances in compact portable spectroscopy instrumentation have paved the way for elemental analysis via X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to be performed on-site. Consequently, portable spectroscopy helps reduce the time and cost associated with soil analysis.
Moreover, users are able to conduct smaller-scale localized surveys to help promote precision agriculture and boost yield. Portable LIBS is widely regarded as the premium tool for soil analysis of the two methodologies since XRF cannot measure lighter elements: C, N, Na, Mg, Si, P, and K. Each of which is crucial to determine the health and viability of soil. For instance, as N, P, and K are three key nutrients for plant life, NPK-testing is essential to understanding what would be the optimum fertilizer.
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About Avantes BV
Avantes is a leading innovator in the development and application of miniature spectrometers. To meet our customer’s application needs, Avantes continues to develop and introduce new instruments for fiber optic spectroscopy. Avantes instruments and accessories are also deployed in a variety of OEM applications and a variety of industries in markets throughout the world. With more than 18 years of experience in fiber optic spectroscopy and thousands of instruments in the field, Avantes is eager to help our customers find their Solutions in Spectroscopy®.
Techniques Supported
- UV-VIS/NIR spectroscopy
- Process control
- Absorbance/transmittance/reflectance
- Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy
- CIE color spectroscopy
- Portable spectrometers
- Fluorescence spectroscopy
- Custom applications
- lrradiance
- Raman spectroscopy
- OEM application development
Major Products/Services
Low-cost. high-resolution, miniature fiber optic spectrometers: System solutions and OEM instruments for applications from 185 nm to 2500 nm. Detector choices: PDA, CMOS, CCD, back-thinned CCD, and lnGaAs.
Optical benches with focal lengths of 45, SO or 75 mm; revolutionary new ultra-low straylight optimized optical bench (ULS) and a new high sensitivity optical bench.
Other Features
- 14 and 16 bit AID converters
- TE cooling
- multi-channel instrument configurations enabling simultaneous signal acquisition
- USB2 communication support for multiple instruments from a single computer
- 14 programmable digital I/O ports
Standard Application Solutions
- lrradiance and LED measurements
- gemology
- hemometric analysis
- thin-film measurement
- color
- fluorescence
- laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS)
- Raman spectroscopy
- process control
Light Sources
- Tungsten-halogen
- Deuterium
- LED
- Xenon calibration sources for wavelength and irradiance
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