H. Vanhoe et al., SPECTRAL INTERFERENCES ENCOUNTERED IN THE ANALYSIS OF BIOLOGICAL-MATERIALS BY INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA-MASS SPECTROMETRY, Journal of analytical atomic spectrometry, 9(3), 1994, pp. 177-185
In order to evaluate the potential of inductively coupled plasma mass
spectrometry for the analysis of biological materials, a systematic st
udy on the occurrence of spectral interferences was carried out. All p
olyatomic ions originating from the matrix elements Ca, Cl, P, K, C, N
a and S that give rise to spectral overlap with the analyte elements w
ere examined systematically. For these matrix elements, which are repr
esentative of most biological materials, a list of all the polyatomic
ions, which can be seen to interfere up to a matrix element concentrat
ion of 1 g l-1, is given. In addition, for each spectral interference,
the corresponding apparent analyte concentration was calculated for d
ifferent matrix concentrations. In this way, an interference factor (I
F) could be calculated for each spectral overlap so that the extent an
d importance of each potential spectral interference can be estimated.
This factor is defined as follows: IF = 10(6) x apparent concentratio
n (analyte element)/concentration (matrix element). A study on the for
mation and short- and long-term stability of polyatomic ions was also
carried out to evaluate the use of some simple correction procedures t
o overcome spectral overlaps. Finally, a review of the correction proc
edures applied to biological materials is given together with some exa
mples.