…on with the show

Hello, my name is Chris Jones, as Lisa mentioned in her post, I am a new Technical Specialist for the Vision systems. This includes the FPIA, Morphologi G3 and brand new Morphologi G3-ID which combines the powerful automated imaging of the Morphologi with a Raman spectrometer to provide chemical identity of individual particles. Anyway, enough about the kit, this is about me!

I’ve spent my academic and professional career in imaging and spectroscopy at one energy/length scale or another. My PhD was in Nanoscale physics. I used electrons to image atoms and surfaces, I also used electrons to probe local electronic structure at the nanoscale.

After my PhD I started developing synchrotron instrumentation. A synchrotron is a particle accelerator where the energy of the particles is used to generate high energy x-rays. These x-rays can be used to image or probe the electronic structure of materials. Theoretically x-rays at high energies can provide just as much resolution as electron microscopes, in reality the optics just aren’t that good, and that is where a lot of our development was focused.

Now at Malvern Instruments, of course, I work at a much smaller energy scale, and therefore much longer wavelength. The longer wavelength limits us to measuring particles greater than 0.5 µm in size. However, the Morphologi is somewhat smaller, cheaper and easier to use than my previous instruments!

Outside of imaging and spectroscopy I’m a big sports fan, although there isn’t enough time to keep up with everything, so I concentrate on Rugby and F1. I have been known to dabble in basketball, tennis and athletics at various times. I still play rugby and if anyone fancies it I’m still up for a game of basketball. I am also a rather typical physicist and enjoy the usual geeky things that entails, so outside of work I keep a keen eye on almost all areas of science and technology.