The development and properties of inductively coupled plasma sources are discussed and their applications to spectrochemical analysis are reviewed. Comparisons are made with other types of plasma source.

A critical survey of plasma emission sources used in analytical spectroscopy, excluding conventional arc and spark sources, has been made. In Part I the concept of temperature applied to high-temperature excitation sources is considered, as are arc plasma jets. Part II will be concerned with microwave and capacitively coupled sources and in Part III inductively coupled sources will be dealt with. In the last part a comparison will also be made of all the sources reviewed, from the point of view of sensitivity, precision and freedom from matrix effects.