inXitu Co-Founder Wins NASA Invention of the Year Award for 2010

Campbell, CA, March 11, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The Invention of the Year (IOY) recognizes patented and licensed NASA inventions in one or two categories. The Government Invention of the Year is given to the technology that has benefited the government the most over the previous four years while the Commercial Invention of the Year is given to the invention that has had the most commercial impact since licensing. Dr. Philippe Sarrazin, CTO inXitu inc., and Dr. David Blake, NASA Ames Research Center, have been awarded the prestigious NASA Commercial Invention of the Year Award for their invention of the powder vibration chamber utilized in the inXitu line of XRD products. This leap forward in technology enables a new level of cost and performance in powder XRD analysis and has made the inXitu products an industry success.

inXitu Inc. is a leader in portable XRD/XRF based instrumentation specializing in developing the technologies required to enable the next generation of scientific instruments used for materials analysis. The technology used in its portable rock and mineral analyzer also received an R&D 100 award and was chosen to fly on the Mars Science Laboratory rover scheduled for launch in 2011.

The powder handling methods can dramatically improve the quality of XRD data while reducing the requirements for sample preparation. inXitu’s patented technique makes possible quality XRD data to be collected regardless of the grain size of the sample. Grain sizes up to 400 um have been tested producing data normally obtained with micron size particles.

Incorporating key technologies from its portable XRD instrument and advanced sample handling techniques, inXitu has developed solutions targeted for identification and analysis in the areas of material analysis, pharmaceuticals, forensics, art and archaeological materials.

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