The autonomous instrument: A design

Is it still possible, necessary and beneficial to perform research in ICP-atomic emission spectrometry?

“…The ideal would be to have an autonomous instrument, 12 with an intelligent software to take full benefit of the potential of CTD detectors, as mentioned previously: automatic line selection, efficient semiquantitative analysis, true self-diagnostics and feedback, optimization of the operating parameters, which implies an efficient use of chemometrics and information retrieval. 13 Automatic line selection should include several to many lines per element, taking into account matrix spectral interferences and relative concentrations, with, when possible, a pool of lines covering different ionization states, excitation energies, optical transitions, so as to carry out an automatic survey of spectral and non-spectral interferences.…”

Optimization of the technique of standard additions for inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

“…For the last decade, our laboratory has been studying aspects related to the automation of ICP-AES [1][2][3][4] and more recently, ICP-MS. [5][6][7][8][9] The general approach towards analytical calibration methodology selection in the ''Autonomous Instrument'' is to try to use the lowest cost analytical methodology that will yield results to a desired accuracy consistent with the amount of sample available. The main sources of errors that can diminish accuracy in ICP-MS are interferences, either spectral or matrix effects.…”