Prof. Dr. Detlef Günther

Detlef Günther was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of ETH Zurich in 1998 and became associate Professor in July 2003. Since February 2008 he is full Professor for Trace Element and Micro Analysis and since January 2015 Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations of ETH Zurich.

Detlef Günther was born in Köthen November 21, 1963 grew up in Gehrden (Germany) and studied chemistry at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany (1982-1987). He did his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in the group of L. Moenke in 1990. Afterwards he joined the Institute of Plant Biochemistry working on analytical methods to characterize heavy metal-binding proteins using HPLC-ICP-MS. In 1994 he started as a post-doc at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in the group of H. Longerich. From 1995 until 1998 he worked in the group of C.A. Heinrich at the Institute of Isotope Geology and Mineral Resources at ETH Zurich.

His research interests are trace element characterizations of different samples using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). He studied transport-processes of Laser-induced aerosols and the improvement of detection capabilities of ICP-Mass spectrometers for the determination of trace elements in liquid and solid samples. In the last years he worked mainly on new sample introduction systems for nanoparticles and laser-generated aerosols and on fundamental vaporization processes of particles within an ICP. A new instrument based on a portable laser ablation system has been developed and allows direct sampling in the field, which is most interesting for archeological applications. Most recently new developments towards high spatialy resolved multielement imaging capabilities are carried out.