Evaluation of different calibration strategies for the analysis of pure copper and zinc samples using femtosecond laser ablation ICP-MS.
Solution-doped metal powder pellets as well as aspirated liquids were used as calibration samples to analyze pure copper and zinc certified reference materials (CRMs) by femtosecond laser ablation ICP-MS. It was demonstrated that calibration by copper pellets resulted in relative deviations up to 20%, whereas fs-LA-ICP-MS among copper-based CRMs led to inaccuracies in the same range unless nominal mass fractions were chosen to be <3 mg/kg. Calibration by zinc pellets generally provided better accuracy. Depending on the analyte considered, deviations below 10% were obtained even for mass fractions close to the limit of quantification. Our data, therefore, indicate solution-doped metal powder pellets to be suitable as calibration samples for fs-LA-ICP-MS of metals. Furthermore, the utilization of liquid standards for calibration was found to result in stronger deviations of up to 50% for both copper and zinc samples which, in addition, turned out to be dependent on the plasma conditions.
Traub
Heike
H
BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Richard-Willstaetter-Strasse 11, 12489 Berlin, Germany. heike.traub@bam.de
Wälle
Markus
M
Koch
Joachim
J
Panne
Ulrich
U
Matschat
Ralf
R
Kipphardt
Heinrich
H
Günther
Detlef
D