title: A simple and demountable capillary microflow nebulizer with a tapered tip for inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
abstract: A simple and demountable capillary microflow nebulizer (d-CMN) was developed for inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). It consisted of a nebulizer body, a fused-silica capillary with a tapered tip and a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) adapter. The gas orifice i.d., the solution capillary tip i.d. and its wall thickness were 200, 30, and 5 μm, respectively. The sensitivities, detection limits, precisions and the long-term stability with the d-CMN were evaluated. The experimental results indicated that its performances at low uptake rates were similar or better than those obtained with the conventional concentric nebulizer at 820 μL/min and the micromist nebulizer at 200 μL/min. The demountable construction of the d-CMN permitted that the blocked or broken solution capillary could be conveniently renewed. The low self-aspiration rate (4.77 μL/min) and the analytical characteristics comparable to commercial microflow nebulizers made the d-CMN a good choice for coupling capillary electrophoresis and microbore high-performance liquid chromatograph to ICP-MS. The proposed d-CMN was successfully applied in the iodine speciation by coupling microchip capillary electrophoresis (MCE) to ICP-MS. The absolute detection limits for iodide and iodate of 0.20 and 0.29 fg were achieved with satisfactory resolution.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Microanalytical Systems, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
authors.forename: Heyong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Xuefeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Zigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Xiuzhong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D019075:Electrophoresis, Capillary; D004867:Equipment Design; D007455:Iodine / Q000032:analysis; D057230:Limit of Detection; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009330:Nebulizers and Vaporizers
chemical_list: D007455:Iodine