Jm. Harnly, THE EFFECT OF SPECTRAL BANDPASS ON SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIOS FOR CONTINUUM SOURCE ATOMIC-ABSORPTION SPECTROMETRY WITH A LINEAR PHOTODIODE-ARRAY DETECTOR, Spectrochimica acta, Part B: Atomic spectroscopy, 48(6-7), 1993, pp. 909-924
Equations describing the optical throughput of a monochromator are use
d as a basis for modeling the dependency of the signal-to-noise ratio
on the monochromator parameters and the limiting noise. In-depth evalu
ation is made for the detector noise-limited case with multiple detect
ors, i.e. a linear photodiode array detector. The model shows that the
detection limit improves with the square root of the spectral bandpas
s and with the square root of the pixel width. A high resolution echel
le monochromator and a low resolution (200 mm focal length) monochroma
tor are both accurately described by the model. The two monochromators
have comparable detection limits when the limiting noises are the sam
e.