Complete capillary electrophoresis process on a drone: towards a flying micro-lab.

Hazardous remote places exist in the world. Why should health or life be risked sending a scientist to the investigation site, as the remote analytical instrumentation exists? Different scientific fields require instruments that could be used on-site (in situ), therefore the purpose of this work was to design a fully automated chemical analysis system small enough to be mountable on a drone. Here we show an autonomous analytical system with sampling capability on a drone. The system is suited for the remote and autonomous analysis of volatile and non-volatile chemicals in the air. The designed system weighs less than 800 g. Data are transmitted wirelessly. Collected substances are separated automatically without the intervention of the operator using the method of capillary zone electrophoresis. The analytes are detected using a miniaturized contactless conductivity detector quantifying them down to less than 1 µM. In this work, we demonstrated sampling and separation of volatile amines (triethylamine and diethylamine) and organic acids (acetic and formic acids), non-volatile inorganic cations (K+, Ca2+, Na+), and protein (bovine serum albumin) in the aerosol state. It was shown that the capillary electrophoretic analysis can be performed on a hovering drone. We anticipate our work to be a starting point for more sophisticated, autonomous complex sample analysis. We believe that our designed instrument will enable the investigation of hazardous places in different research fields.

Laser wakefield accelerated electron beams and betatron radiation from multijet gas targets.

Laser Plasma Wakefield Accelerated (LWFA) electron beams and efficiency of betatron X-ray sources is studied using laser micromachined supersonic gas jet nozzle arrays. Separate sections of the target are used for the injection, acceleration and enhancement of electron oscillation. In this report, we present the results of LWFA and X-ray generation using dynamic gas density grid built by shock-waves of colliding jets. The experiment was done with the 40 TW, 35 fs laser at the Lund Laser Centre. Electron energies of 30-150 MeV and 1.0 × 108-5.5 × 108 photons per shot of betatron radiation have been measured. The implementation of the betatron source with separate regions of LWFA and plasma density grid raised the efficiency of X-ray generation and increased the number of photons per shot by a factor of 2-3 relative to a single-jet gas target source.

High-density gas capillary nozzles manufactured by hybrid 3D laser machining technique from fused silica.

In this report, an efficient hybrid laser technique, nanosecond laser rear-side processing and femtosecond laser-assisted selective etching (FLSE) for the manufacturing of high-density gas capillary targets, is demonstrated. Cylindrical capillary nozzles for laser betatron X-ray sources were numerically simulated, manufactured from fused silica by 3D laser inscription and characterized using interferometry and gas density reconstruction. The dependence of gas concentration profiles on the wall roughness of cylindrical channels is presented.

Aberrations induced by anti-ASE cap on thin-disk active element.

Optical aberrations induced in thin-disk laser elements with an undoped layer, performing as an anti-ASE cap, are analyzed. A numerical model, used for calculations of the optical path difference (OPD) induced by temperature distribution inside the laser element and by deformation of surfaces, was confirmed experimentally. Results of numerical modeling manifest that adding an undoped layer on the thin-disk has detrimental effect on the reflected laser beam brightness and scaling. It is also shown that brightness of a thin-disk laser may be enhanced by the use of the Gaussian pump beam profile.