Arcs, sparks, low-pressure discharges, furnaces continues to be significant in many areas. In ICP-AES many applications in chemometrics, and the detection of transient and lasers 1.1 Arcs pulses from solid sampling and chromatography, have benefited from simultaneous detection of multiple lines. T he plethora of 1.2 Sparks 1.3 Low-pressure discharges equipment options for ICP-AES has resulted in a rash of studies on the combination of nebulizer, desolvation, axial 1.3.1 Glow discharges 1.3.2 Surface-wave magnetoplasma discharges viewing, internal standardization, etc., in order to improve figures of merit. 1.3.3 Fundamental studies 1.4 Furnaces Many applications of L A-AES are now reaching the published literature, including the development of portable 1.5 Lasers 1.6 Other sources instrumentation, and the technique has been used extensively for the investigation of ablation mechanisms. T he use of L IF 2 Inductively coupled plasmas 2.1 Fundamental studies has grown in popularity due to the increased availability of low-cost laser diodes in the visible spectrum. Glow discharges 2.2 Sample introduction 2.2.1 Nebulizers continue to find application in many areas, particularly for depth profiling analysis, and the direct analysis of flowing 2.