The atomic emission detector in gas chromatographic trace analysis

Some unique properties of gas chromatography coupled with atomic-emission detection

“…All congeners could, therefore, be quantified with one standard [50]. Similar results were reported for Cl and Br in both aromatic and aliphatic compounds [51,52,53,54] and for organochlorine compounds purged from water [12]. That different responses can be obtained for compounds of the closest possible structural similarity, e.g.…”

“…The closer the chemical structure of the reference compound was to that of the analyte, the better the quantification. This has been contradicted by other findings that report an identical response for sulfur in different functional groups [52,56,57] and in 15 compounds containing the same functional group but of different molecular weight, for which the average deviation of the response factor from the real value was 4.0% (for 0.1 ng sulfur injected) [58]. Overloading of the detector leads to a lower response [58].…”

“…Studies with 13 C have included chlorinated dibenzodioxin [52], 13 C-labeled amino acids from whisky brewing [97], 13 C-labeled progesterone [98], and urinary metabolites from labeled caffeine [94,99]. A compound-independent response was observed for both 13 C and 15 N so quantification required one standard only.…”

Determination of brominated alkylbenzenes in nickel industry sludge by capillary gas chromatography

“…For GC-AED, previous studies have demonstrated that response in the bromine-selective mode is dependent only on the amount of bromine introduced into the plasma [8,9,11,12,[18][19][20][21]. Thus, bromine-responses are almost independent of molecular structures and this has been demonstrated for a broad range of different compounds including brominated alkylbenzenes [15,16].…”

“…With relatively high temperatures in the ion source, brominated compounds have been shown to produce substantial amounts of Br-, which can be monitored at m/z 79 and 81 [5][6][7]. In addition to this technique, which has received only minor interest in the literature, bromineselective detection in capillary gas chromatography has been carried out by atomic emission spectroscopy (GC-AED) [8][9][10][11][12]. In the latter technique, atomic emission from atomic bromine is monitored with a high degree of selectivity from a small helium plasma.…”