Determine the constituents of your material, from lithium to uranium, including light elements like C, N, O, and F that other techniques struggle to detect.
Sub-ppm detection limits and reliable isotopic verification mean you can trust what you’re seeing.
See where every element is, not just how much of it is present.
Map up to 90 mm × 90 mm at 5–150-micron resolution to reveal the spatial heterogeneities, contaminants, and inclusions that bulk analysis misses entirely.
Understand your material in three dimensions without cutting, polishing, or cross-sectioning.
Build a layer-by-layer picture through tens of microns, characterizing coatings, SEI layers, interfaces, and failure penetration with nanometer-scale depth resolution.
Load your sample, define your analysis, and press go. Massbox automatically identifies and isotopically verifies every detected element. What previously required multiple instruments and hours of sample preparation now happens in a single session.
Massbox fits on a 3.5 ft × 2 ft bench space and runs on standard single-phase power. It requires no gas cylinders, fume hoods, or dedicated infrastructure. Take it to the factory floor, the field office, or a remote site.
Operating under vacuum, Massbox directly analyzes air- and moisture-sensitive materials such as cycled battery electrodes, reactive metal powders, or solid-state electrolytes, without atmospheric exposure compromising your results.
From new battery chemistries to critical mineral deposits to advanced materials, Massbox is changing how scientists and engineers work.
Explore APPLICATIONS
See how Massbox compares to ICP-MS, XRF, LIBS, and SEM-EDX and what that means for your operating costs and throughput.
Explore Results
Massbox combines a patented dual-laser (LALI) ionization source with Time-of-Flight (TOF) mass analyzer. One laser removes material from a solid sample, a second laser ionizes neutral particles; eliminating many of the interferences and matrix effects that plague other techniques.
Get cleaner spectra, more reliable elemental verification, and simultaneous results across the full periodic table in a single session.
Detection limits down to 100s of ppb (application and element dependent)
Straightforward quantification from clean mass spectra and isotopic elemental verification
Elemental mapping up to a 90-mm-by-90-mm area with 5-150-micron resolution
Depth profiling with up to 10-100-nm resolution (application dependent)
Instrument size: 106 cm (W) x 68 cm (D) x 59 cm (H)
High vacuum environment achieved less than 1 minute after samples are loaded
Mass resolution: 800 dm/m at mass of 100
Versatile sample accommodation within 90 mm x 90 mm area
A mass spectrometer (MS) is an analytical instrument that measures the mass of ions. All mass spectrometers share three basic components:
After the sample door closes, an airlock keeps the chamber under high vacuum, so Massbox is ready for testing in less than a minute. The first laser ablates material straight from the sample surface. A second laser targets the neutral particles, creating ions without using argon gas or plasma. This dual-laser process is called Laser Ablation Laser Ionization (LALI). A time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyzer then captures a full mass spectrum at every laser spot.
The first laser fires perpendicular to the sample surface and ablates material straight from the solid surface. This creates a plume of plasma and neutral particles, with no acid digestion needed beforehand. The user may adjust the ablation laser’s spot size from 5–150 microns.
The second laser fires parallel to the sample surface and targets the neutral particles in the ablated plume, creating ions without using argon gas or plasma. These ions are then injected directly to the time-of-flight mass analyzer.
By using LA, Massbox does not require complicated dissolution or digestion procedures to prepare solid samples for analysis. Compared to ions formed by the plasma, there is much less elemental fractionation in the neutral particle cloud. Using LI on the neutrals reduces the need for matrix-matched standards because these particles are more representative of the actual sample.
In many traditional MS instruments, the ablation occurs in a chamber at atmospheric pressure. Because mass analysis requires a vacuum, the ions must traverse through a series of cones and interfaces to get from atmospheric pressure to the vacuum. Losses occur at each stage of this process. In fact, approximately 1% of the initial ablated material ultimately reaches the detector. Contrary to traditional instruments, the LALI source is already at vacuum, resulting in nearly 100% ion transport efficiency.
Any solid or powder sample, inorganic or organic, including pseudo solids such as biological samples. Massbox measures the full periodic table from lithium to uranium, including light elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
Massbox costs around $600 a year to run, compared with $26,600 for a typical ICP-OES lab, over 97% lower. It eliminates the need for argon and nitrogen gases, acid digestion, fume extraction, and ancillary equipment, and runs on standard single-phase power. It also eliminates the routine recalibration and daily setup time that other techniques demand.
Massbox is equipped with a touch-screen computer on which all data are loaded and stored. Additionally, the user can connect the instrument to a cloud-based server to share data with the whole team.
Exum is committed to exceeding our customers’ expectations by providing excellent support. All instruments contain an all-inclusive, 1-year warranty for instrument service and support. After this, Exum offers extended warranty options and service packages.
Massbox’s detection limits go down to the 100s of ppb (application and element dependent). See the periodic table here. See our Results page for more.
For LALI, the only requirement is a flat sample with a solid surface. For most samples, preparation involves simply cutting and/or polishing the sample until its surface is relatively flat (less than 0.5 mm surface height variability), with no mirror polishing or acid digestion required. Powders can be pressed into a pellet or adhered to a tab. Samples are loaded onto a 90 mm by 90 mm holder, and the bottom-loading stage brings every sample to the same height.
No. Massbox requires no gas supplies, no chemicals, and no specialist operator. It needs only standard single-phase power and temperature control, so it can be deployed wherever the work takes you, from the field office to the factory floor.
