Publication details
Easily ionizable elements in analytical plasma pencil spectroscopy
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Any discharge based excitation source may suffer from some matrix interferences. Especially easily ionizable elements from the group of alkali metals and also alkali earths can be a major source of these effects. Herein we present an experimental study describing the influence of these elements on measured spectral lines intensities and analytical results for some selected analytes. Similarly to previous studies with inductively coupled plasma a depression of the measured signals occurred in most cases. A strong decrease was observed in dependence on the concentration of the interferent while the influence of the analyte concentration is almost negligible. The dependence of the analyte signal decrease on the interferent concentration is not linear. Addition of e.g. sodium chloride causes a steep decrease of copper signal for a relatively narrow range 0-0.2 g l-1 of NaCl. Higher NaCl concentrations bring only moderate signal suppression. In comparison with other lines of elements showing different matrix effects the Na-Cu atomic interaction can be modeled by inelastic collisions of Na-Cu excited atoms with very similar energetic levels. The influence of the interferents on the plasma properties was monitored by calculation of excitation and rotational temperatures and electron number density. |
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