AEROSOL MASS MEASUREMENT AND SOLUTION STANDARD ADDITIONS FOR QUANTITATION IN LASER-ABLATION INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA-ATOMIC EMISSION-SPECTROMETRY

A new approach for quantitation in laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (LA-ICPAES) is presented. A portio n of the laser-ablated sample aerosol is diverted to an aerosol mass m onitor to measure variations in the amount of sample ablated and trans ported to the ICP torch. This provides a normalization for variations in laser ablation efficiency due to changes in laser power and focus a t the sample and variations in material transport out of the ablation cell and into the ICP torch. During the laser ablation sampling proces s, solution standards are nebulized and the aerosol is added to the la ser-ablated aerosol to generate a standard addition curve for the anal yte being determined. The standard addition procedure corrects for pot ential plasma-related matrix effects in the ICP emission signal result ing from the ablated sample, The precision of this method, for triplic ate analyses far the determination of 16 elements is four glass sample s, and the accuracy of this method relative to the nominal glass compo sitions are both approximately 10%.