Preliminary Investigation of Electrothermal Vaporization Sample Introduction for Inductively Coupled Plasma Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The coupling of an electrothermal vaporization (ETV) apparatus to an inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ICP-TOFMS) is described. The ability of the ICP-TOFMS to produce complete elemental mass spectra at high repetition rates is experimentally demonstrated. A signal-averaging data acquisition board is employed to rapidly record complete elemental spectra throughout the vaporization stage of the ETV temperature cycle; a solution containing 34 elements is analyzed. The reduction of both molecular and atomic isobaric interferences through the temperature program of the furnace is demonstrated. Isobaric overlaps among the isotopes of cadmium, tin, and indium are resolved by exploiting differences in the vaporization characteristics of the elements. Figures of merit for the system are defined with several different data acquisition schemes capable of operating at the high repetition rate of the TOF instrument. With the use of both ion counting and a boxcar averager, the dynamic range is shown to be linear over a range of at least 6 orders of magnitude. A pair of boxcar averagers are used to measure the isotope ratio for silver with a precision of 1.9% RSD, despite a cycle-to-cycle precision of 19% RSD. Detection limits of 10-80 fg are calculated for seven elements, based upon a 10-microL injection.

Multielement trace-element speciation in metal-biomolecules by chromatography coupled with ICP–MS

“…Both (Q) and (DF)ICP-MS instruments scan the masses singly, so "spectral skew" can appear for short transient peaks [48].…”

An Overview of Analytical Applications of Time of Flight-Mass Spectrometric (TOF-MS) Analyzers and an Inductively Coupled Plasma-TOF-MS Technique

“…The performance of the ICP-TOF-MS instrument for transient signals generated by an ETV source has been characterized. 127 A dynamic range of at least 6 orders of magnitude and DLs of 10 -80 femtogram have been achieved in the analysis of a solution containing 34 elements.…”

“…Exceptional attributes of ICP-TOF-MS, such as high speed of data acquisition, an ability to obtain a full elemental analysis in a time-frame suited to a transient inlet system and significantly better, as compared with widely used quadrupole ICP-MS, the precision of the measurements generate increasing interest in the technique. The ICP-TOF-MS has been successfully coupled to LA, [120][121][122][123][124][125][126] ETV, 127 GC, [128][129][130][131][132] liquid chromatography, 133,134 CE 135,136 and FIA. [137][138][139][140][141] Detailed reviews of the development and analytical performance of TOF-MS combined with ICP ion source have been presented.…”

Comparison of chloride- and hydride-generation for quantitation of germanium by headspace solid-phase microextraction–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry

“…Electrothermal vaporization [14], hydride generation [11,15,16,17,18], propylation [19], and ethylation techniques [20,21,22] have thus been used for this purpose.…”