Studies on the quantitative analysis of trace elements in single SiC crystals using laser ablation-ICP-MS

An approach to the reconstruction of true concentration profile from transient signal in spatially resolved analysis by means of laser ablation ICP MS

“…1 Compared with other analytical techniques suitable for microanalysis with similar figures of merit, e.g., glow dischargeoptical emission-mass spectrometry, secondary ion/neutral mass spectrometry, electron probe microanalysis, laser induced plasma emission spectrometry, particle-induced X-ray emission, and Auger-spectroscopy, LA-ICP-MS has numerous advantages, e.g., non-vacuum conditions, fastness, few restrictions concerning sample geometry, and a wide range of measurable concentrations. The ability to analyse both major and trace elements within a small area of the sample (10 2 -10 5 mm 2 ) as well as across large patterns (within cm range) is very important for the variety of applications of LA-ICP-MS in materials science, [1][2][3][4][5][6] mineralogy and geochemistry, [7][8][9][10][11][12] archaeology, 10,14 and biology. 15 Movable beam position regarding the sample surface allows to profile the lateral distribution of elements across the sample area.…”

Tackling the Challenging Determination of Trace Elements in Ultrapure Silicon Carbide by LA-ICP-MS

“…Attempting at filling this gap, the laser ablation technique coupled with ICP-MS (LA-ICP-MS) has been recently proposed as a simpler and cheaper alternative direct analytical method for the determination of trace elements in SiC materials; as a matter of fact, the instrumental cost of LA-ICP-MS is at least four times lower than that of double-focusing GD-MS. LA-ICP-MS provides reliable quantitative information down to mg/kg and sub-mg/kg levels over a dynamic linear range of 4–5 orders of magnitude [ 30 ]. However, only a very poor number of works have reported this technique [ 16 , 30 , 31 , 32 ] and no clear current trends can be defined. Notwithstanding the promising analytical performances, many critical issues should be tackled to make LA-ICP-MS a reliable method suitable for the determination of trace elements in SiC; as an example, universal sample preparation (i.e., physical immobilization/stabilization of powdered samples) and calibration strategies (necessarily matrix-matched) are not yet conceived.…”

Different calibration strategies for the analysis of pure copper metal by nanosecond laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

“…However, appropriate calibration samples are often not available, especially not for low element mass fractions. Synthetic solid calibration samples are an alternative, which were applied for the analysis of different matrices by LA-ICP-MS. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Another possibility of calibration is the nebulisation of standard solutions in combination with laser ablation, which was also employed in a number of analytical studies. [24][25][26][27][28][29] In our work different types of external calibrations with matrix-matched standards were applied for the bulk analysis of pure copper metal by nanosecond laser ablation (ns-LA) ICP mass spectrometry.…”