Determination of elemental mercury by cavity ringdown spectrometry

Cold vapor cavity ringdown spectroscopy has been successfully applied to th e detection of elemental mercury. Using an absorption cell 0.18 m in length , detection limits of 0.027 and 0.12 ng were obtained using peak area and p eak height measurements, respectively. For the peak area measurement, this corresponds to a gas phase concentration of less than 25 ng m(-3). For comp arison, using a similar absorption cell, standard AAS yielded a Hg detectio n limit (peak height) of 9 ng, (gas phase concentration of similar to 8.3 m u g m(-3)).