New Gas Analyser Clinches Award

Tiger Optics (USA) announces that its breakthrough product, the Prismatic™ Multi-Species Gas Analyser, has won the first annual “Best of Show” award at the prestigious Pittsburgh Conference. More than a decade in development, the new product is a single analyzer that can measure trace levels of as many as 16 different molecules with Tiger Optics’ field-proven technology, known as Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CW CRDS). The new Prismatic instrument has won top marks for innovation, environmental “green” attributes, and other cost and quality considerations.

Tiger’s latest product also garnered a Gold Award in the Gas Analysis Category. It was the second such award in three years for the manufacturer in a competition conducted by Gases & Instrumentation International. Trophies will be presented during this week’s 61st Pittcon, with about 950 exhibitors present. Tiger’s Prismatic instrument relies on a novel, patented technique that utilises Brewster’s Angle retroreflector prisms to gain high reflectivity over a wide wavelength range. This ‘broadband’ capability allows trace detection of different molecules in one device – a dramatic advance for both industry and research.

Development of the instrument began in 1997, when the company’s technical partner, Professor Kevin Lehmann, conceived of a CRDS tool that would replace the customary high-reflectivity mirrors with Brewster’s Angle prisms. On the strength of his intriguing approach, Tiger Optics secured developmental Phase I and Phase II grants from the National Science Foundation in 1999 and 2001, respectively. The team then worked for years to identify the most suitable prism materials and to determine a method to effectively and permanently align the prisms. During that time, Lehmann moved from Princeton University to the University of Virginia, where he is currently the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry.

“We are proud that the research has finally borne fruit,” says Lisa Bergson, Tiger Optics’ founder and chief executive. “The magnitude of this advance and the effort it entailed prompt us to suggest that the Prismatic is not so much an ‘improved product’ as an entirely new platform for gas analysis.”