Analytical professor Grace Muna just published a research article titled Electroanalytical Performance of a Bismuth/Antimony Composite Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium in the peer-reviewed journal Electroanalysis. You can access the article online by clicking HERE. This article was long in the making and involved many semesters of research by six different undergraduate students. Four of the students were supported by NSF LSAMP grants and two were awarded internal SMART grants. This may be the first article from our department that describes the use of energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS or EDX) in which electrons from a scanning electron microscope are fired at a sample to knock core electrons out of atoms in the sample. The electronic holes are then filled as valence electrons "fall" into them and emit X-rays as they do so. The wavelengths of X-rays emitted identify the element of the atoms and thus an EDS spectrum tells us what elements are in a sample and in what proportion. You basically determine the sample's chemical composition.
