Nowoczesne techniki analityczne wykorzystujące plazmę indukcyjnie sprzężoną jako źródło wzbudzenia i jonizacji

Plasma spectrometric techniques: inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) are rapidly becoming the most important analytical tools for the determination of trace amounts of elements. High speed, excellent detection limits, wide dynamic range and possibility of accurate multi-element analysis make the techniques particularly suited to the determination of ppb and sub-ppb levels of the analytes in complex matrices. Mass spectrometric methods offer unique capability of rapid isotopic ratios measurements. Plasma techniques have found wide applications in analysis of geological, environmental and clinical samples. They have proved to be very useful in speciation studies due to extremely low sensitivities offered and the ease of on-line combination with separation techniques, in particular with chromatography. A brief review of ICP-AES and ICP-MS techniques is presented in the paper. The possibility and limitations of the techniques as analytical tools are discussed. The most important analytical parameters are collected in Table 1. Detailed characteristics of equipment used: sample introduction systems, analyzers and detectors are given. The discussion of experimental parameters, including the choice of analytical wavelengths (ICP-AES) and isotopes (ICP-MS), is presented. The main physical, matrix, chemical and spectral interferences occurring in analysis of real samples are characterized.