ICP - AES Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry:

The main application of the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) today is in atomic emission spectroscopy (AES), as an excitation spectrochemical source, although uses of an ICP for fluorescence as just an atomiser, and specially for mass spectrometry, as an ionization source, are rocketing in the last few years.

Since its inception, only a quarter of a century ago, ICP-AES has rapidly evolved to one of the preferred routine analytical techniques for convenient determination of many elements with high speed, at low levels and in
the most varied samples.

Perhaps its comparatively high kinetic temperature (capable of atomising virtually every compound of any sample), its high excitation and ionisation temperatures, and its favourable spatial structure at the core of the ICP success.

By now, the ICP-AES can be considered as having achieved maturity in that a huge amount of analytical problems can be tackled with this technique, while no major or fundamental changes have been adopted for
several years.

Despite this fact, important driving forces are still in operation to further improve the ICP-AES sensitivity, selectivity, precision, sample throughput, etc. Moreover, proposals to extend the scope of the technique to traditionally elusive fields (e.g. non-metals and organic compound analysis) are also appearing in the recent literature.

In this paper the state of the art, the last developments and the expectations in trying to circumvent the limitations of the ICP-AES (on the light of literature data and personal experience) are reviewed.

Alfredo Sanz-Medel1

(1) Department of Physical and Analytical Chemistry, University of Oviedo, Julián Claveria S/N, E-33006 Oviedo, Spain

Source: SpringerLink - Journal Article