Advances in dielectric barrier discharge-optical emission spectrometry for the analysis of trace species

Abstract

During the last years, various miniaturized optical emission spectrometric (OES) systems based on dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) micro-plasma as a radiation source have gained novel advances and exhibited powerful capability in the field of trace elemental analysis. As the heart of such analytical systems, DBD micro-plasma possesses a series of unique features and it is a promising technique for the development of miniaturized atomic spectrometric instrumentations, including OES spectrometers. This mini-review presents and 10 discusses the progress of DBD-OES systems in the analysis of gaseous species and those in aqueous medium. In the case of gaseous species, the approaches are focused on direct detection by DBD-OES after appropriate sample introduction. For the case of analyzing target species in aqueous medium, the entire analytical process includes DBD-OES detection unit, electrothermal vaporization or chemical vapor generation unit. Special emphasis has been focused on the novel applications of DBD-OES systems and its hyphenation with various analytical techniques. Future perspectives of DBD-OES systems for trace elemental analysis have been depicted. 15 65

Determination of mercury in mosses by novel cold vapor generation atmospheric pressure glow microdischarge optical emission spectrometry after multivariate optimization

“…15 and 16) and can be improved by using an additional pre-concentration system. 17,18 Other alternative low-power miniaturized plasma-or discharge-based radiation sources, including pulsed direct current microplasma (Pdc), 21 dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), [22][23][24][25][26] microwave microstrip plasma (MSP), 27,28 electrolyte cathode glow discharge (ELCAD) [29][30][31] or atmospheric pressure glow microdischarge (APGD), 32 are also developed and used for the determination of traces of Hg that is commonly preconcentrated prior to spectrochemical measurements by using chemical vapor generation (CVG) systems, [15][16][17][18][19][21][22][23][25][26][27][28]32 a sonoinduced CVG system, 20 a Au-on-W coiled lament, 24 or a solid phase extraction (SPE) tube. 31 In our recent paper, 32 a miniaturized atmospheric pressure glow discharge (mAPGD) generated between a miniature He ow jet nozzle anode and a small-sized owing liquid cathode (FLC) was successfully combined with CVG for the OES quantication of traces of Hg.…”

“…In the overwhelming majority of papers related to new miniaturized plasma-or discharge-based radiation sources, the OFAT method was favored and applied to test the effect of different factors and select their optimal working conditions. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Although it is the most popular and generally accepted experimental approach, it requires more individual experiments to be run to achieve the desired precision of important effects of factors, cannot estimate interactions between factors and oen misses their optimal settings. 33 Because the discharge phase is loaded with products (Hg vapors) and by-products (excess of H 2 , H 2 O vapor) of the CVG reaction, which takes place in a reaction/separation unit, a large number of experimental factors affect the performance of CVG-mAPGD-OES and numerous interactions could be expected.…”

Capillary Dielectric Barrier Discharge: Transition from Soft Ionization to Dissociative Plasma

“…While these first measurements with halogenated liquid samples such as CHCl 3 or C 6 H 5 F suffer from well-known problems, namely, coupling the flow of the GC into the DBD-OES system, they also show comparable LODs to the previously described direct injection of the CHClF 2 in the range of some tens of picograms. This is comparable to or even better than some DBD-OES methods employed by other groups. − The DBD-OES system presented here can also be compared to established detectors like FID or BID which can provide higher sensitivity of only a couple of tens of picograms but have no selectivity of their own, giving the DBD-OES a clear advantage for certain applications.…”

Atomization of Bismuthane in a Dielectric Barrier Discharge: A Mechanistic Study

“…Plasma devices based on dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) [1] can be used in many applications in analytical spectrometry. Depending on their construction and operating conditions, this includes: desorption/soft ionization devices [2] coupled with mass spectrometry (MS); excitation sources for atomic emission spectrometry (AES) [3]; atomizers for atomic absorption (AAS) [4:8] and fluorescence (AFS) spectrometry [9:15] as well as sources for metal vapor generation [16:18]. The increased interest in DBD devices in recent years can be attributed to their universality of use, low power consumption, low cost of fabrication and operation as well as user friendliness.…”

“…Plasma devices based on dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) can be used in many applications in analytical spectrometry. Depending on their construction and operating conditions, this includes desorption/soft ionization devices coupled with mass spectrometry (MS); excitation sources for atomic emission spectrometry (AES); atomizers for atomic absorption (AAS) − and fluorescence (AFS) spectrometry − as well as sources for metal vapor generation. − The increased interest in DBD devices in recent years can be attributed to their universality of use, low power consumption, low cost of fabrication and operation as well as user friendliness. Because DBD atomizers remain rather novel in AAS/AFS, with some dozen publications − demonstrating their use as atomization sources for volatile compounds, including mercury cold vapor and hydride forming elements, − there has been no work yet focused on a thorough investigation of atomization mechanisms with a single exception of the report published by Abdul-Majeed and Zimmerman …”