Atomic Oxygen Spectra in the Argon Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP)

Abstract

Nonresonant, low-energy atomic oxygen transitions from high-energy (11 to 16 eV) singlet, triplet, and quintet states are observed in the 2 kW argon inductively coupled plasma (ICP). A table of ICP oxygen lines and relative emission intensities from 2500 to 10 000 Å is presented. The degree of molecular dissociation in the ICP is evaluated for several small, highly stable molecules as a function of rf power level over the range of 0.2 to 2.25 kW. Quantitative dissociation is achieved at power levels ≥1.95 kW. The use of these nonresonance O(I) lines for the analytical detection of oxygen is reported. The present detection limit for nonoptimized conditions is 0.5 μg. Considerable improvement is expected in the future. The response is linear, and the precision using a gas sampling loop is 0.5% RSD.

Speciation of inorganic and organometallic compounds in solid biological samples by thermal vaporization and plasma emission spectrometry

“…The detection limits which we obtained for Hg vary from 0.006 to 0.1 µg or 0.0001 to 0.001 ng/s in the three plasmas and for As varies from 0.08 to 0.3 µg or 0.0008 to 0.004 ng/s in the three plasmas. These values are superior to those obtained by using the ICP-AES method but inferior to those obtained by Estes et al (25). However, it must be stressed that the atmospheric pressure microwave He plasma system used by Estes et al (24) was operated at 45-75 W and would very likely have little tolerance for solvents or vaporized molecular constituents of the sample matrices, especially when samples of 250 mg or larger are thermally volatilized.…”

Detection of negative ions by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

“…This method necessitates larger amounts of samples than thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) does. Shields et al (2) determined the absolute value of copper isotope abundance ratios by using TIMS. For the sample loading they have developed an electroplating method in which a copper sample is electroplated on the filament.…”

“…Previous attempts in ICP optical emission spectroscopy (OES) to determine nonmetals have yielded only limited practical utility (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Although emission from many of these elements can be observed, it is typically detected only when relatively high concentrations of the analyte are present in the sample.…”

Effects of traces of oxygen on Grimm-type glow discharges in argon

“…These lines, very close in wavelength, originate from upper energy levels lying around 10.740 eV. 24 In a modelling study on Ar/O 2 GD 25 Bogaerts has recently predicted the presence of a significant concentration of O ( 3 P) ground state atoms, about two orders of magnitude lower than that of O 2 (X) ground state molecules. The dissociation of O 2 by argon metastable atoms, Ar m *, [26][27][28][29] and electron impact dissociation 30 are the dominant production processes of the O ( 3 P) atoms in Ar/O 2 GD.…”