How did flow injection analysis, and its related techniques, develop in various parts of the globe? Reflections of prominent FIA practitioners

Jarda Růžička, Co-inventor of FIA (Denmark and USA)

“…In 1965, Technicon Company, who marketed Skegg's AutoAnalyzer, organized a workshop in London which I attended. It was a fascinating experience.

For next ten years this flow technique captured my imagination, and allowed me to develop a new approach to automated radiochemical analysis. The AutoAnalyzer technology dominated clinical and industrial analysis for almost 20 years, since the air segmentation was believed to be the only way, of preserving identity of serially analyzed samples.

In

Elo Hansen, Co-inventor of FIA (Denmark)

“……Back in the 70s Jarda and I were, as dedicated analytical chemists, compelled to effect analytical procedures in the most efficient way to attain optimal sensitivity and selectivity. This guided us, via numerous experiments, to the invention of FIA…….

……The exploitation of the 3 cornerstones of FIA, that is, sample injection, controllable dispersion and reproducible timing. These aspects have, in my opinion (and as mentioned above), opened up entirely new avenues in analytical chemistry, such

Gary D. Christian (USA)

“……It goes back to my sabbatical in Europe in 1978/1979. I had been following the early literature in FIA, and while at the University of Geneva in 1979, I spent a lot of time in the library searching the literature in the field (before the availability of electronic databases!), in preparation for submission of a proposal to NSF. I uncovered some early references not known before and included them in the NSF proposal. While the proposal was not funded (a fate of early work in the field), ……”

My

Alan Townshend (UK)

“……FIA was introduced into our research program whilst I was a lecturer at Birmingham University. It was first taken up by Dr. Alison Macdonald in ca. 1976, and we were both very impressed by a visit to Lyngby soon after to the laboratories of Ruzicka and Hansen.

I moved to the University of Hull in 1980, where I remain, and my FIA research group expanded rapidly.

I was joined in 1984 by Paul Worsfold.

In particular FIA proved ideal for monitoring chemiluminescent reactions, which required

Bo Karlberg (Sweden)

“……FIA, yes this technique has governed and changed my entire life. It started as early as 1975 which means that I became aware of this technique just slightly after its conception. My research at that time was devoted to ion selective electrodes, so I knew both Ruzicka and Hansen since they were active in the same research field just before they invented FIA. We had met at several conferences and also visited each other at our respective universities…….

……I heard about FIA very early and went

Tadao Sakai (Japan)

“……In 1983, at Gifu College of Dentistry, interests with FIA spectrophotometry for determination of metals with new reagents such as nitroso-ESAP, Nitroso-PAPS, 5-Br-PSAA. ……

……Coupling of instrumentations for sensitive and/or multi-compound detection…. Highly sensitive detection systems, Simultaneous detection systems, application to clinical, pharmaceutical, environmental analysis, FIA/SIA with SPE….”

Shoji Motomizu (Japan)

“.... the first Journal of Flow Injection Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1 was published in June, 1984. In 1991, Flow Analysis V was held in August 21–24, 1991 in Kumamoto……”

“……. In my case, I started FIA research around 1980. I was interested in numbers of special characteristics and advantages of FIA in chemical analysis, such as possibility of the improvement of sensitivity, selectivity and reproducibility of measurement, simplicity and rapidity of sample throughput, automation of chemical

Jacobus (Koos) Frederick van Staden (Romania)

“….There are a number of issues that initiated my interest in flow based systems that eventually culminated into flow injection analysis.

I started my research work on flow injection analysis in January 1977 at the University of Pretoria on the determination of calcium in animal feeds. The continuous flow equipment was supplied by Cenco, Breda, The Netherlands. We used a transfer sampler, a peristaltic pump, a colorimeter fitted with a first-generation 15-mm tubular flow cell without de-bubbler,

Elias A.G. Zagatto (Brazil)

“…….it should be recalled that flow injection analysis was originally applied to large scale analyses in CENA, University of S. Paulo, Piracicaba, Brazil, and I was nearby. The enthusiasm of pioneers such as, e.g., H. Bergamin-Filho, J. Růžička, J.W.B. Stewart and CENA staff was the driving force towards my engagement in flow injection analysis.

Regarding developments, early contributions such as, e.g., confluent stream addition, merging zones, zone sampling, use of solid reagents, liquid–liquid

Boaventura F. Reis (Brazil)

“I started the work with FIA process at 1976 as an MS student, under the supervision of the Prof. Henrique Bergamin, São Paulo University (Brazil). Today, I’m a full Professor, Center of Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (São Paulo University).

My favorite aspect of FIA is the versatility to handle chemical solutions, a feature that has been exploited to develop analytical procedures comprising a wide range of sample matrices, which has been implemented using all detection techniques usually

Paul Worsfold (UK)

“…The early papers by Jarda Růžička and Elo Hansen which encouraged me to successfully apply for a postdoctoral position with them.

The application to challenging issues in environmental science, particularly biogeochemical processes in aquatic systems.

Long term remote deployments to acquire unique, high temporal and spatial resolution environmental data.

The technique of flow injection (FI) analysis provides an integrating theme for my research activities, with particular emphasis on the design,

Sandy Dasgupta (USA)

“….With the first papers on flow injection published in 1975 (at the time I was a graduate student trying to measure sulfuric acid aerosol in air), flow injection was a mature technique by the time I became an independent investigator. What struck me as wonderful about flow injection analysis is the ease of automation without involving air segmentation and perhaps more importantly, the aspect of controlled reproducible dispersion.

In 1984 I had obtained a grant from the United States EPA to

Lola Luque de Castro (Spain)

“……we started with the design of two-channel manifolds such as that for the catalytic-fluorimetric determination of copper…….

……for on-line development of filtration and preconcentration steps after leaching a complex sample and prior to injection of the analytical sample into GC–MS/MS equipment…

…… mainly focused on metabolomics/proteomics and on exploitation of by-products from the agrofood industry. Both fields require the help of more or less complicated FI manifolds, which are designed by

Victor Cerdà (Spain)

“….Some times more than 20 h were needed for potentiometric titrations to obtain high precision results. My conclusion was that this was not a task to be done by a person, but by a machine. When I moved in 1982 to the University of the Balearic Islands we decide to develop some kinds of flow systems to make the potentiometric and spectrophotometric measurements……

……Finally after a night of insomnia we had the idea to integrate in a flow system the advantages of the previous ones and removing

José Martínez Catalayud (Spain)

“In those times, the possibility of analytical automation by not using a “black box” was fascinating. It was possible to “see” through the tubing how the solutions were advancing or merging. In addition the required instrument was available (e.g., spectrophotometer, fluorimeter, etc.) in lab; only flow cells, a peristaltic pump and tubing were required. All this led to a clear conclusion: “It was possible to continue the research on analytical chemistry under modern methods” with the

Manuel Miró (Spain)

“My interest for FIA and related techniques started as undergraduate student when listening to Victor (Cerdà’s) lectures on FIA and SIA and realising that most of the limitations of batch assays could be overcome exploiting flow-based approaches. In fact, my MS thesis at the University of the Balearic Islands involved the development of a sequential injection liquid-phase micro-extraction procedure based on wetting film extraction for determination of nitrophenol derivatives. This was my very

José Luis F. Costa Lima (Portugal)

“……Flow analysis became a passion in the beginning of the 80s when I found out the immense potential of combining flow injection with potentiometric detection. The previous years have been spent developing several ion-selective electrodes (ISE) without internal reference solution and we came to conclude that coupling these devices with flow analysis would improve the electrodes performance as a consequence of the continuous renewal of the membrane/solution interface and the reproducible timing

José Luis Burguera (Venezuela)

“….the research topic of my PhD Thesis was about chemiluminescence (CL) in aqueous media. My supervisor was Professor Alan Townshend. As Marcela (my wife) also finished her PhD at almost the same time, she hurried up to return to Venezuela to meet our twin sons.

I did not want to turn back to Venezuela without having both titles, and therefore I remained from April to July waiting for the date of the University congregation. So, as meanwhile I had nothing to do, Alan (I call him like this as a

Petr Solich (Czech Republic)

“The main interesting aspects I found in flow methods are: easy automation with any expensive instrumentation, reproducibility of the flow system, flexibility of all modes of flow analysis, generally “easy to see-easy to use” instrumentation.

The future trends could include:

• 1.

  Development of flexible manifolds for sample preparation.

• 2.

  Development of manifolds using various separation techniques (including membrane and column technologies).

• 3.

  Flow-manipulation techniques (as SIA, MSFIA) will be more

Miroslav Polášek (Czech Republic)

“My interest in FIA was initiated in the early years of my professional career at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Charles University (which is still my alma mater and employer) in Hradec Kralove in the beginning of 1980s after reading the early FIA works of Jarda Ruzicka and and Elo Hansen

Surely the development of FIA and SIA led to the introduction of chemiluminescence methods in analytical practice. In my opinion, the future of automated FIA/SIA is in their application in on-line process control,

Spas D. Kolev (Australia)

“…….my supervisor, Prof. Ernö Pungor, asked me to suggest an analytical project I’d like to work on…….

FIA was still an emerging technique, and I was fascinated by the possibilities it opened to chemical analysis and by its strong similarities to chemical reactor systems I was already familiar with.

I expect exciting future developments in the areas of:

• •

  Low cost miniaturized (e.g., lab-on-chip) and disposable (e.g., paper-based micro fluidic systems) flow analyzers for environmental and clinical

Marek Trojanowicz (Poland)

“….In 1980 in my school at University of Warsaw, after study visit to Ruzicka and Hansen's lab in Copenhagen….

Fabrication of various modules in lab, and also playing with transient signals.

Definitely two directions in the coming future:

• -

  miniaturization to microfluidic formats of the same dimensions as common capillary electrophoretic chips, to employ this as truly portable devices,

• -

  designing flow systems as accessories hooked up to large instrumentation to provide a well mechanized sample

Ian D McKelvie (Australia)

“……My interest in FIA was triggered by a Talanta paper by Shoji Motomizu in 1983 on phosphate analysis using the Malachite Green method. My colleagues and I were studying phosphorus cycling in mountain streams, and we needed a sensitive phosphate method that was cheaper, faster and more portable than the IC techniques that we were using at the time. So we tried FIA…

……What still endears FIA to me, is the ability to do fast, sensitive and precise environmental analyses, e.g., at sea, using

Kate Grudpan (Thailand)

“…No experience until nearly the end of PhD study under Dr Colin Taylor in Liverpool, by support of the British Council for a visit (1980) to Prof Betteridge's FIA lab in Swansea. Various ideas in cost effective FIA set-ups were created. This line of research is very useful where budget is limited. In 1986, I had the chance to start collaboration with Ian McKelvie, still in the line of cost effective approach. In 1990, during Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship at (Nuclear) Karlsruhe