COMPARISON OF ICP-MS WITH SPARK ABLATION AND GDMS FOR DIRECT ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF CONDUCTIVE SOLIDS

The performance of two techniques for direct analysis of conducting sa mples has been compared in the analysis of the same standard reference materials with identical low resolution MS equipment and comparable o perational conditions for both: inductively coupled plasma mass spectr ometry (ICP-MS) with spark ablation and glow discharge mass spectromet ry (GDMS). With individually optimized operational conditions, ICP-MS with spark ablation offers not only the advantage of significantly low er disturbances from interfering molecules but also shorter analysis t ime, whereas GDMS excels in particular by lower detection limits. Unde r compromise conditions to realize comparability also for the total an alysis time, the analytical figures of merit are nearly identical pres erving the advantage of low contributions form interferences in the ca se of spark ablation for sample introduction.