ANALYSIS OF TRACE-ELEMENTS IN POLYVINYLID ENE FLUORIDE BY X-RAY-FLUORESCENCE AND INDUCTIVE COUPLING PLASMA-MASS SPECTROMETRY WITH AN ABLATION LASER

Trace element determination in Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) has two aims : a comparison of commercial products and quantitative data acqui sition for the promotion of this technical polymer in the field of ele ctronic high purity fluid transportation. X-ray Fluorescence XRF) and laser ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) h ave been used in order to replace the time consuming and likely to pol lute (loss of volatiles or reagent contamination) wet chemistry analys is. More than 25 elements have been measured, using synthetic calibrat ion standards. This work outlines the complementarity of the two techn iques. ICP-MS is particularly well suited for the measurement of trace elements with atomic number higher than Ga (detection limits <1 ppm), whereas x-ray fluorescence is well suited for the analysis of lower a tomic number elements (detection limits lie in the low ppm range). The results can be extrapolated to other polymers, thanks to the implemen tation of x-ray fluorescence simulation programs.