Highlights of 2016

A bent neutron mirror has been considered as one of the best solutions for focusing neutron beams from the viewpoint of cost-benefit performance. Although the form deviation of the bent profile is expected because of the large spot size, it is difficult to measure due to its geometric limitation. Here, we propose a non-contact measurement system using an auto focus (AF) laser probe on an ultrahigh precision machine tool to precisely evaluate the form deviation of the bent mirror. The AF laser probe is composed of a diode laser, a position sensitive sensor, a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and a microscope objective lens which is actuated by an electromagnetic motor with 1 nm resolution for position sensing and control. The sensor enables a non-contact profile measurement of a high precision surface without any surface damage in contrast with contact-type ultrahigh precision coordinate measurement machines with ruby styli. In the on-machine measurement system, a personal computer simultaneously acquires a displacement signal from the AF laser probe and 3-axis positional coordinates of the ultrahigh machine tool branched between the linear laser scales and the numerical controller. The acquisition rate of the 4-axis positional data in 1 nm resolution is more than 10 Hz and the simultaneity between the axes is negligible. The profile of a neutron bent mirror was measured from a transparent side using the developed system, and the result proves that the form deviation of the mirror enlarged the the spot size of focused neuron beam.

Knowledge of propeller or rotor blade behaviour under real operating conditions is crucial for optimizing the performance of a propeller or rotor system. A team of researchers, technicians and engineers from Avia Propeller, DLR, EVEKTOR and HARDsoft developed a rotating stereo camera system dedicated to in-flight blade deformation measurements. The whole system, co-rotating with the propeller at its full speed and hence exposed to high centrifugal forces and strong vibration, had been successfully tested on an EVEKTOR VUT 100 COBRA aeroplane in Kunovice (CZ) within the project AIM²—advanced in-flight measurement techniques funded by the European Commission (contract no. 266107). This paper will describe the work, starting from drawing the first sketch of the system up to performing the successful flight test. Apart from a description of the measurement hardware and the applied IPCT method, the paper will give some impressions of the flight test activities and discuss the results obtained from the measurements.

This paper discusses the propagation of the instantaneous uncertainty of PIV measurements to statistical and instantaneous quantities of interest derived from the velocity field. The expression of the uncertainty of vorticity, velocity divergence, mean value and Reynolds stresses is derived. It is shown that the uncertainty of vorticity and velocity divergence requires the knowledge of the spatial correlation between the error of the x and y particle image displacement, which depends upon the measurement spatial resolution. The uncertainty of statistical quantities is often dominated by the random uncertainty due to the finite sample size and decreases with the square root of the effective number of independent samples. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to assess the accuracy of the uncertainty propagation formulae. Furthermore, three experimental assessments are carried out. In the first experiment, a turntable is used to simulate a rigid rotation flow field. The estimated uncertainty of the vorticity is compared with the actual vorticity error root-mean-square, with differences between the two quantities within 5–10% for different interrogation window sizes and overlap factors. A turbulent jet flow is investigated in the second experimental assessment. The reference velocity, which is used to compute the reference value of the instantaneous flow properties of interest, is obtained with an auxiliary PIV system, which features a higher dynamic range than the measurement system. Finally, the uncertainty quantification of statistical quantities is assessed via PIV measurements in a cavity flow. The comparison between estimated uncertainty and actual error demonstrates the accuracy of the proposed uncertainty propagation methodology.

The Profilscanner developed by PTB enables traceable roughness and profile measurement of high aspect ratio structures with diameters down to 50 μm. For the first time the inner surfaces of small sonic nozzles with diameters in the submillimetre range could be successfully characterized. The comparison between these topographical measurements and corresponding mass flow rate experiments confirms the assumption that the topography of the inner surfaces has a strong influence on the mass flow rate of small nozzles.

The authors have recently developed a soft-elastomeric capacitive (SEC)-based thin film sensor for monitoring strain on mesosurfaces. Arranged in a network configuration, the sensing system is analogous to a biological skin, where local strain can be monitored over a global area. Under plane stress conditions, the sensor output contains the additive measurement of the two principal strain components over the monitored surface. In applications where the evaluation of strain maps is useful, in structural health monitoring for instance, such signal must be decomposed into linear strain components along orthogonal directions. Previous work has led to an algorithm that enabled such decomposition by leveraging a dense sensor network configuration with the addition of assumed boundary conditions. Here, we significantly improve the algorithm's accuracy by leveraging mature off-the-shelf solutions to create a hybrid dense sensor network (HDSN) to improve on the boundary condition assumptions. The system's boundary conditions are enforced using unidirectional RSGs and assumed virtual sensors. Results from an extensive experimental investigation demonstrate the good performance of the proposed algorithm and its robustness with respect to sensors' layout. Overall, the proposed algorithm is seen to effectively leverage the advantages of a hybrid dense network for application of the thin film sensor to reconstruct surface strain fields over large surfaces.

We report on a method to characterize the height of periodic x-ray absorbing structures. Such structures are used for example in grating-based x-ray interferometry. In contrast to other techniques, our approach allows for a non-destructive determination of the height based on a few transmission measurements. It can be used with conventional laboratory-based x-ray setups and is therefore of great interest at the application sites of the structures, as it allows further characterization without the need of additional hardware. Here we present the principle of the method, show first results acquired with an absorption grating and compare them with theoretical calculations and those obtained using a destructive method.

For loosely coupled INS/GPS integrated navigation systems with low-cost and low-accuracy microelectromechanical device inertial sensors, in order to obtain enough accuracy, a full-state nonlinear dynamic model rather than a linearized error model is much more preferable. Particle filters are particularly for nonlinear and non-Gaussian situations, but typical bootstrap particle filters (BPFs) and some improved particle filters (IPFs) such as auxiliary particle filters (APFs) and Gaussian particle filters (GPFs) cannot solve the mismatch between the importance function and the likelihood function very well. The predicted particles propagated through inertial navigation equations cannot be scattered with certainty within the effective range of current observation when there are large drift errors of the inertial sensors. Therefore, the current observation cannot play the correction role well and these particle filters are invalid to some extent. The proposed IPF firstly estimates the corresponding state bias errors according to the current observation and then corrects the bias errors of the predicted particles before determining the weights and resampling the particles. Simulations and practical experiments both show that the proposed IPF can effectively solve the mismatch between the importance function and the likelihood function of a BPF and compensate the accumulated errors of INSs very well. It has great robustness in a serious noisy scenario.

The furnace effect is a major uncertainty source in the realization of high-temperature fixed points in metal–carbon systems. The cause of this effect is as yet unexplained, and understanding it is a high-priority task for the inclusion of fixed points in future high-temperature metrology. In this paper, the furnace effect is studied experimentally and systematically with three furnaces, two cells, and two radiation thermometers. The copper point is chosen for the fixed point of investigation in order to eliminate the influence of the properties of the furnace. Correction for drift and the size-of-source effect of the thermometer is applied to achieve the required measurement accuracy. As a result, the furnace effect has been demonstrated quantitatively for the first time as the difference in radiance temperature of the same cell observed in different furnaces by the same thermometer. The experimental results show that it is related to the dimension of the furnace and the design of the fixed-point blackbody cell.

In this paper the realization and optimization of two coreless open-loop bus bar current transducers based on a Hall effect sensor are presented. Two types of bus bar are evaluated: flat rectangular and rectangular with a restrictive region in the middle. Both realized transducers are capable of measuring AC and DC currents up to 300 A and 10 kHz frequency with nonlinearity less than 0.3% in the entire range. Several methods for resolving issues with the skin effect and stray magnetic fields are presented along with the experimental test results. Some of the presented methods are novel and have never been evaluated.

The measurement of temperatures in gas turbines, boilers, heat exchangers and other components exposed to hot gases is essential to design energy efficient systems and improve maintenance procedures. When on-line measurements, such as those performed with thermocouples and pyrometers, are not possible or inconvenient, the maximum temperatures of operation can be recorded and measured off-line after operation. Although thermal paints have been used for many years for this purpose, a novel technique based on irreversible changes in the optical properties of thermographic phosphors, can overcome some of the disadvantages of previous methods.

In particular, oxidation of the divalent rare earth ion phosphor BaMgAl₁₀O₁₇:Eu (BAM:Eu) has shown great potential for temperature sensing between 700 °C and 1200 °C. The emission spectra of this phosphor change with temperature, which permits to define an intensity ratio between different lines in the spectra that can be used as a measurand of the temperature. In this paper, the study of the sensing capabilities of a sensor coating based on BAM:Eu phosphor material is addressed for the first time. The sensitivity of the intensity ratio is investigated in the temperature range from 800 °C to 1100 °C, and is proved to be affected by ionic diffusion of transition metals from the substrate. The use of an interlayer made of zirconia proves efficient in reducing ionic diffusion and coatings with this diffusion barrier present sensitivity comparable to that of the powder material.

Measurement of out-of-plane linear motion with high precision and bandwidth is indispensable for development of precision motion stages and for dynamic characterization of mechanical structures. This paper presents an optical beam deflection (OBD) based system for measurement of out-of-plane linear motion for fully reflective samples. The system also achieves nearly zero cross-sensitivity to angular motion, and a large working distance. The sensitivities to linear and angular motion are analytically obtained and employed to optimize the system design. The optimal shot-noise limited resolution is shown to be less than one angstrom over a bandwidth in excess of 1 kHz. Subsequently, the system is experimentally realized and the sensitivities to out-of-plane motions are calibrated using a novel strategy. The linear sensitivity is found to be in agreement with theory. The angular sensitivity is shown to be over 7.5-times smaller than that of conventional OBD. Finally, the measurement system is employed to measure the transient response of a piezo-positioner, and, with the aid of an open-loop controller, reduce the settling time by about 90%. It is also employed to operate the positioner in closed-loop and demonstrate significant minimization of hysteresis and positioning error.

The present study reports on a new photoacoustic (PA) measurement method that is suitable for the investigation of light induced absorption effects including e.g. excited state absorption. Contrary to the modulation of the radiation intensity used in conventional PA-methods, the key principle of this novel setup is based on the modulation of the induced absorption coefficient by light. For this purpose, a pump-probe setup with a pulsed pump laser beam and a continuous probe laser beam is utilized. In this regime, the potential influence of heat on the PA-signal is much smaller when compared to arrangements with pulsed probe beam and continuous pump beam. Beyond that, the negative effect of thermal lenses can be neglected. Thus, the measurement technique is well-suited for materials exhibiting a strong absorption at the pump wavelength. The quantitative analysis of the induced absorption coefficient was achieved by the calibration of the additional PA-signal caused by the continuous probe laser to the PA-signal resulting from the pulsed pump laser using thallium bromoiodide (KRS-5) as sample material.

In fringe projection profilometry systems, high order polynomial calibration models can be employed to improve the accuracy. However, it is not stable to fit a high order polynomial model with least-squares algorithms. In this paper, a novel method is presented to analyze the significance of each polynomial term and simplify the high order polynomial calibration model. Term significance is evaluated by comparing the loading vector elements of the first few principal components which are obtained with the principal component analysis, and trivial terms are identified and neglected from the high order polynomial calibration model. As a result, the high order model is simplified with significant improvement of computation stability and little loss of reconstruction accuracy. An interesting finding is that some terms of 0 and 1st order, as well as some high order terms related to the image direction that is vertical to the phase change direction, are trivial terms for this specific problem. Experimental results are shown to validate of the proposed method.

We present a novel, non-contact, and non-optical approach to actuation and sensing. In the developed method, both functions are based only on the alternating magnetic field and take place simultaneously. The article demonstrates the technique in one of its potential applications, i.e. rheometry. The developed device uses two orthogonal pairs of inductor coils to generate a rotating magnetic field. The field actuates a rotor with an embedded NdFeB ring magnet. The angular displacement is simultaneously monitored with an angular AMR sensor, placed underneath the rotor. The device is used to study aqueous solutions at different concentrations of glycerol (10–95%). The accuracy of the angular sensing is verified using machine vision and pattern recognition, which is a technique widely used in the existing viscometers. A new approach to viscosity probing and phase slipping detection is introduced. So far, in non-contact rotational viscometers the dynamic viscosity was related to a critical frequency, determined by altering the frequency of the rotating magnetic field. However, we propose to alter the magnitude of the field, by changing the current in the inductor coils. The frequency is kept constant and the viscosity is proportional to the amplitude of current, for which the phase slipping occurs. The applied rate of rotation can be optimized for a particular measurement scenario. The results suggest a great potential of the technique in a variety of scenarios. Simultaneous magnetic actuation and sensing enables application in a broad frequency band, from dc to tens of kilohertz. Moreover, the design of a measurement device is simplified, so that its cost can be significantly lower than that of a conventional system. Furthermore, presented method is non-contact, does not require a clear optical path, and could be less susceptible to the environmental conditions (e.g. poor illumination, or full immersion in the studied solution).

An intrinsic relation is given between the skin-friction vector and the surface pressure gradient through the boundary enstrophy flux (BEF), and it is used to study the possibility to extract some skin-friction structures from a surface pressure field. This attempt contains two related parts. In the first part, when the BEF field is given, a projected skin-friction field in the image plane can be sought from a surface pressure image based on a variational solution of an optical-flow-like equation. This approach is validated in several classical flows. The second part deals with a practical problem in which the BEF field is not known a priori. In this case, a so-called auxiliary skin-friction field is determined from a surface pressure image alone by using the same variational approach. The auxiliary skin-friction field has the magnitude proportional to the skin-friction magnitude and the direction of the negative surface pressure gradient. The physical meaning of the auxiliary skin-friction field and its applicability to global skin-friction diagnostics are discussed.

The ability to detect wires is an important capability of the cabinet x-ray imaging systems that are used in aviation security as well as the portable x-ray systems that are used by domestic law enforcement and military bomb squads. A number of national and international standards describe methods for testing this capability using the so called useful penetration test metric, where wires are imaged behind different thicknesses of blocking material. Presently, these tests are scored based on human judgments of wire visibility, which are inherently subjective. We propose a new method in which the useful penetration capabilities of an x-ray system are objectively evaluated by an image processing algorithm operating on digital images of a standard test object. The algorithm advantageously applies the Radon transform for curve parameter detection that reduces the problem of wire detection from two dimensions to one. The sensitivity of the wire detection method is adjustable and we demonstrate how the threshold parameter can be set to give agreement with human-judged results. The method was developed to be used in technical performance standards and is currently under ballot for inclusion in an international aviation security standard.

This paper presents a simultaneous imaging method of temperature and ethanol concentration of ethanol–water mixtures in microfluidic channels. The principle is based on the facts that the absorbance at a wavelength of 1905 nm is dependent on the temperature of water and that the absorbance at 1935 nm is independent of the temperature but strongly dependent on the molar concentration of water, which is reciprocal to the molar concentration of ethanol in the mixture. The absorbance images at the two wavelengths were acquired alternately, each at 50 frames per second, by an alternate irradiation system and near-infrared (NIR) camera, and then converted to the temperature and concentration images by a linear regression model. The imaging method was applied to a dilute ethanol–water mixture with an ethanol concentration of 0.43 M and water flowing side by side in a temperature-controlled Y-channel. The concentration images clearly showed differences between the mixture and water streams, and that the transverse concentration gradient between the two streams decreased downstream by mutual diffusion. It was also confirmed that the mutual diffusion coefficient increased as the temperature increased. The temperature images showed that uniform distributions were immediately formed due to heat transfer between the fluid and channel materials.

Measurement of oil contamination of produced water is required in the oil and gas industry to the (ppm) level prior to discharge in order to meet typical environmental legislative requirements. Here we present the use of compact, mobile ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, in combination with solid phase extraction (SPE), to meet this metrology need. The NMR hardware employed featured a sufficiently homogeneous magnetic field, such that chemical shift differences could be used to unambiguously differentiate, and hence quantitatively detect, the required oil and solvent NMR signals. A solvent system consisting of 1% v/v chloroform in tetrachloroethylene was deployed, this provided a comparable ¹H NMR signal intensity for the oil and the solvent (chloroform) and hence an internal reference ¹H signal from the chloroform resulting in the measurement being effectively self-calibrating. The measurement process was applied to water contaminated with hexane or crude oil over the range 1–30 ppm. The results were validated against known solubility limits as well as infrared analysis and gas chromatography.

Matrix mismatching in the quantitative analysis of materials through calibration-based laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a serious problem. In this paper, to overcome the matrix mismatching, two distinct approaches named addition standardization (AS) and addition-internal combinatorial standardization (A-ICS) are demonstrated for LIBS experiments. Furthermore, in order to examine the efficiency of these methods, the concentration of calcium in ordinary garden soil without any fertilizer is individually measured by each of the two procedures. To achieve this purpose, ten standard samples with different concentrations of calcium (as the analyte) and copper (as the internal standard) are prepared in the form of cylindrical tablets, so that the soil plays the role of the matrix in all of them. The measurements indicate that the relative error of concentration compared to a certified value derived by induced coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy is 3.97% and 2.23% for AS and A-ICS methods, respectively. Furthermore, calculations related to standard deviation indicates that A-ICS method may be more accurate than AS one.

The usefulness of an infrared imaging device, in terms of both acting as a mechanism for surface thermal monitoring when a specimen is being impacted and as a non-destructive evaluation technique, has already been proved. Nevertheless, past investigation has focused on mainly thermoset-matrix composites with little attention towards thermoplastic ones. Conversely, these thermoplastic composites are becoming ever more attractive to the aeronautical sector. Their main advantage lies in the possibility of modifying their interface strength by adjusting the composition of the matrix. However, for a proper exploitation of new materials it is necessary to detail their characterization. The purpose of the present paper is to focus on the use of infrared thermography (IRT) to gain information on the behaviour of thermoplastic composites under impact. In addition, attention is given to image processing algorithms with the aim of more effectively measuring the extension of the impact-affected area.⁴

Many factors influence the performance of additive manufacturing (AM) processes, resulting in a high degree of variation in process outcomes. Therefore, quantifying these factors and their correlations to process outcomes are important challenges to overcome to enable widespread adoption of emerging AM technologies. In the powder bed fusion AM process, the density of the powder layers in the powder bed is a key influencing factor. This paper introduces a method to determine the powder bed density (PBD) during the powder bed fusion (PBF) process. A complete uncertainty analysis associated with the measurement method was also described. The resulting expanded measurement uncertainty, U_PBD (k  =  2), was determined as 0.004 g · cm⁻³. It was shown that this expanded measurement uncertainty is about three orders of magnitude smaller than the typical powder bed density. This method enables establishing correlations between the changes in PBD and the direction of motion of the powder recoating arm.

To investigate fractoluminescence in scintillating crystals used for particle detection, we have developed a multi-channel setup built around samples of double-cleavage drilled compression (DCDC) geometry in a controllable atmosphere. The setup allows the continuous digitization over hours of various parameters, including the applied load, and the compressive strain of the sample, as well as the acoustic emission. Emitted visible light is recorded with nanosecond resolution, and crack propagation is monitored using infrared lighting and camera. An example of application to $\text{B}{{\text{i}}_{4}}\text{G}{{\text{e}}_{3}}{{\text{O}}_{12}}$ (BGO) is provided.

The standard step-hold load-relaxation profile can yield variable estimates of mechanical properties due to the difficulty in achieving a step strain experimentally. A ramp-hold profile overcomes this limitation if appropriate model functions can be derived. Utilizing Boltzmann hereditary integral operators for two indentation geometries, analytical ramp solutions for load-relaxation were developed based on the Kelvin–Voigt fractional derivative (KVFD) model. The results identify three model parameters for characterizing viscoelastic behavior from a single model curve fit to the data: the elastic modulus E₀, fractional-order parameter α, and relaxation time constant $\tau$. The quantitative nature of the analysis was validated through measurements on gelatin emulsion samples exhibiting viscoelastic behavior. KVFD-model-based solutions provide mathematically simple and experimentally flexible descriptions of load-relaxation behavior for a range of viscoelastic properties and experimental conditions; e.g. one closed-form solution can fit the ramp and the hold phases of the relaxation time series. Experiments show that the solution for a spherical indenter and plate compressor each fit well to the corresponding experimental relaxation curves with a coefficient of determination R²  >  0.98. Parameters obtained from the spherical-tip indentation and plate-compression geometries agree within one standard deviation, confirming that the ramp solution based KVFD model yields consistent measurements for characterizing viscoelastic materials.

To overcome the limited spatial resolution of standard 12-lead ECG recordings, concentric ring electrodes (CRE) have been proposed to provide valuable data for the diagnosis of a wide range of cardiac abnormalities, including infarction and arrhythmia. Although theoretical studies indicate that the dimensions of the CRE regulate the depth of the electric dipoles sensed by these electrodes, this has not been experimentally confirmed. The aim of this work was to analyze the influence of CRE dimensions and position of a wireless multi-CRE sensor node on the cardiac signal recorded. For this, four wireless multichannel ECG recording nodes based on flexible multi-ring electrodes were placed at positions CMV1 (position comparable to V1), CMV2, CMV4R and CMV5; each node providing three bipolar concentric ECG signals (BC-ECG). Standard 12-lead ECG and 12 BC-ECG signals were recorded in 29 volunteers. The results revealed that a ring with an outer diameter of 33.5 mm achieves a balance between the ease-of-use and spatial resolution of smaller electrodes and improved detectability and higher amplitudes of signals from larger ring electrodes. Although a standard 12-lead ECG outperforms BC-ECC recordings in detectability of cardiac waves, if the relative amplitude of the wave is also considered, BC-ECG at CMV1 proved superior at picking up atrial activity. In fact, in most of the BC-ECG signals picked up at CMV1, P1 and P2 atrial activity waves were more clearly identified than in simultaneous 12-Lead ECG signals. Likewise, BC-ECG signals revealed higher spatial resolution in detecting anomalous electrical activity in local regions, such as impaired intraventricular driving, or atrioventricular blocks. Finally, the wireless multi-CRE sensor node provides enhanced comfort and handling to both patient and clinician over wired systems.

In this paper we present a method for the quantification of chemically distinguished airborne particulate matter, required for health risk assessment. Rather than simply detecting chemical compounds in a sample, we demonstrate an approach for the quantification of exposure to airborne particles and nanomaterials. In line with increasing concerns over the proliferation of engineered particles we consider detection of synthetically produced ZnO crystals. A multi-stage approach is presented whereby the particles are first aerodynamically size segregated from a lab-generated single component aerosol in an impaction sampler. These size fractionated samples are subsequently analysed by Raman spectroscopy. Imaging analysis is applied to Raman spatial maps to provide chemically specific quantification of airborne exposure against background which is critical for health risk evaluation of exposure to airborne particles. Here we present a first proof-of-concept study of the methodology utilising particles in the 2–4 μm aerodynamic diameter range to allow for validation of the approach by comparison to optical microscopy. The results show that the combination of these techniques provides independent size and chemical discrimination of particles. Thereby a method is provided to allow quantitative and chemically distinguished measurements of aerosol concentrations separated into exposure relevant size fractions.

This study reports on a new approach for remote nanothermometry with short response time (milliseconds) aiming to operate in liquid media using AC susceptibility components of a suspended magnetic nanoparticle subjected to the Brownian relaxation mechanism. A simple, low cost, and accurate system was designed to measure AC susceptibility using an AC magnetic field at small amplitude (6 Oe) and frequency range (5 kHz) superimposed on a weak DC magnetic field (up to 30 Oe). A model based on the AC susceptibility of magnetic nanoparticles (30 nm average diameter) was constructed to describe the temperature measurement sensitivity of the dominated Brownian relaxation time. A new approach for remote nanothermometry was achieved with measured AC susceptibility by the designed system and the proposed model. Our experimental results show that our magnetonanothermometer allows temperature errors lower than 0.3 K with standard deviations lower than 0.1 K in the temperature range from 310 to 320 K.

Materials with very low DC magnetic susceptibility have many scientific applications. To our knowledge however, relatively little research has been conducted with the goal to produce a totally nonmagnetic material. This phrase in our case means after spatially averaging over macroscopic volumes, it possesses an average zero DC magnetic susceptibility. We report measurements of the DC magnetic susceptibility of three different types of nonmagnetic materials at room temperature: (I) solutions of paramagnetic salts and diamagnetic liquids, (II) liquid gallium–indium alloys and (III) pressed powder mixtures of tungsten and bismuth. The lowest measured magnetic susceptibility among these candidate materials is in the order of 10⁻⁹ cgs volume susceptibility units, about two orders of magnitude smaller than distilled water. In all cases, the measured concentration dependence of the magnetic susceptibility is consistent with that expected for the weighted sum of the susceptibilities of the separate components within experimental error. These results verify the well-known Wiedemann additivity law for the magnetic susceptibility of inert mixtures of materials and thereby realize the ability to produce materials with small but tunable magnetic susceptibility. For our particular scientific application, we are also looking for materials with the largest possible number of neutrons and protons per unit volume. The gallium–indium alloys fabricated and measured in this work possess to our knowledge the smallest ratio of volume magnetic susceptibility to nucleon number density per unit volume for a room temperature liquid, and the tungsten-bismuth pressed powder mixtures possess to our knowledge the smallest ratio of volume magnetic susceptibility to nucleon number density per unit volume for a room temperature solid. This ratio is a figure of merit for a certain class of precision experiments that search for possible exotic spin-dependent forces of Nature.

A key interest of planetary space missions is the quantitative determination of the chemical composition of the planetary surface material. The chemical composition of surface material (minerals, rocks, soils) yields fundamental information that can be used to answer key scientific questions about the formation and evolution of the planetary body in particular and the Solar System in general. We present a miniature time-of-flight type laser ablation/ionization mass spectrometer (LMS) and demonstrate its capability in measuring the elemental and mineralogical composition of planetary surface samples quantitatively by using a femtosecond laser for ablation/ionization. The small size and weight of the LMS make it a remarkable tool for in situ chemical composition measurements in space research, convenient for operation on a lander or rover exploring a planetary surface. In the laboratory, we measured the chemical composition of four geological standard reference samples USGS AGV-2 Andesite, USGS SCo-l Cody Shale, NIST 97b Flint Clay and USGS QLO-1 Quartz Latite with LMS. These standard samples are used to determine the sensitivity factors of the instrument. One important result is that all sensitivity factors are close to 1. Additionally, it is observed that the sensitivity factor of an element depends on its electron configuration, hence on the electron work function and the elemental group in agreement with existing theory. Furthermore, the conformity of the sensitivity factors is supported by mineralogical analyses of the USGS SCo-l and the NIST 97b samples. With the four different reference samples, the consistency of the calibration factors can be demonstrated, which constitutes the fundamental basis for a standard-less measurement-technique for in situ quantitative chemical composition measurements on planetary surface.