Industrial analysis: metals, chemicals and advanced materials

This Atomic Spectrometry Update is the latest in an annual series appearing under the title 'Industrial Analysis: This year's review has followed the changed format introduced last year. Further changes may be made in the nea r future to reflect the growing interest in certain areas such as semicondu ctor materials and a continuing decrease in technical advances being report ed render other traditional headings. There has been considerable interest in XRF as a tool for the non-destructi ve analysis of metallic art and historical objects. Laser ablation continue s to be explored for metal analysis. Laser ablation ICP-AES was used to dif ferentiate between coins from different countries based on the elemental co mposition profiles (or fingerprints). Improvements to XRF instrumentation and methodology have meant that analysi s of used oil reported via this technique is on the increase. The analysis of coal and its byproducts once again dominates the Fuels section. Various sample preparation Procedures and a host of different analytical techniques have been used for its analysis. Preconcentration using on-tine column tec hniques coupled with atomic spectrometry is very important for trace metal determination. 8-Hydroxyquinoline (8 HQ) has been thoroughly investigated a nd reported by many as an excellent chelating agent for organic based solut ions There have been some interesting developments this year which impact on ino rganic chemicals analysis in industrial applications, particularly in ICP-M S. Elimination and reduction of spectral interferences using collision cell technology in ICP-MS is becoming a commercial reality, ns evidenced by an increasing number of papers dealing with the technique. Materials Control and Accountancy (MC&A) is of utmost importance in the nuc lear industry. Analysis, undertaken for the purposes of MC&A, provides a 'G old Standard' far any laboratory in terms of accuracy, precision and reliab ility. This crucial area has seen some development in the period covered bg this review far nuclear materials analysis. This year, coupling to a variety of detectors has proved to be a popular us e of ETV for the analysis of refractory samples. Finally, one major disappo intment and surprise this year has been the lack of high quality papers and articles which could be selected to grace our Catalysts section.