SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
This review covers developments in 'Atomic Spectrometry'. It covers atomic emission, absorption, fluorescence and mass spectrometry, but excludes material on speciation and coupled techniques which is included in a separate review. It should be read in conjunctionwith the other related reviews in the series. [1][2][3][4][5][6]
Sample introductionThis section covers developments in sample introduction for all instrumental methods.
LiquidsLiquid sample introduction relates to methods wherein the sample is introduced into the instrument in the form of a liquid, such as through nebulization or into a thermal vaporizer; whereas in vapour generation the sample is initially in the form of a liquid but is converted to a vapour prior to introduction into the instrument.
Sample pre-treatment.A general review of on-line preconcentration for ICP-MS has been published by Das et al. 7 , covering solid phase methods and including 63 references. Several reviews of sample pretreatment methods used for atomic spectrometry are worth noting because they focus on specific areas: Kocurova et al.
8and Jain and Verma 9 have reviewed advances in DLLME (53 references) and SDME (407 references) respectively; Zhao et al. the same authors studied the stability of the labelled complexes at different pH and temperature, and when subject to separation using LC. They reported a significant decrease in stability when LC separation was used, and some degradation at 37 °C compared to 2 °C.Li et al. An immunoassay-linked method using gold nano-particles has been developed by Jarujamrus et al. 33 . In this approach the monoclonal antibody-chloramphenicol was attached to a solid support. Antigen-chloramphenicol was labelled with gold nano-particles (10 nm) at pH 9.5, attached to a bovine serum albumin protein and mixed with unlabelled antigenchloramphenicol, which was then added to the antibody-chloramphenicol. for U and Th respectively in water samples.