A GRAPHITE-FURNACE ELECTROTHERMAL VAPORIZATION SYSTEM FOR INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA-ATOMIC EMISSION-SPECTROMETRY

An improved graphite furnace electrothermal vaporization device equipp ed with an autosampler for inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry is presented, The transport losses of eight selected anal ytes in the individual segments of the device were determined by means of the radiotracer technique by applying amounts traced comparable to those to be determined in red samples, The results obtained from the radiotracer study were the basis for further improvement of the interf ace design, leading to considerable increase of the total transport ef ficiency, which finally was found to be between 26 (for Cr) and 57% (f or Ga), The whole system consists of a graphite furnace vaporizer, a p ower supply, a gas now box, and an autosampler with incorporated micro balance, The temperature program, gas flows, and autosampler functions are controlled by a data station which also provides the data acquisi tion and processing of the transient signals, The performance paramete rs of the developed system were evaluated using aqueous standard solut ions, Absolute limits of detection for most analytes were between 0.1 and 1 ng, and for As, K, Ni and Pb, they were between 2 and 3.2 ng.