title: Recent advances in quantitative LA-ICP-MS analysis: challenges and solutions in the life sciences and environmental chemistry.
abstract: Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is a widely accepted method for direct sampling of solid materials for trace elemental analysis. The number of reported applications is high and the application range is broad; besides geochemistry, LA-ICP-MS is mostly used in environmental chemistry and the life sciences. This review focuses on the application of LA-ICP-MS for quantification of trace elements in environmental, biological, and medical samples. The fundamental problems of LA-ICP-MS, such as sample-dependent ablation behavior and elemental fractionation, can be even more pronounced in environmental and life science applications as a result of the large variety of sample types and conditions. Besides variations in composition, the range of available sample states is highly diverse, including powders (e.g., soil samples, fly ash), hard tissues (e.g., bones, teeth), soft tissues (e.g., plants, tissue thin-cuts), or liquid samples (e.g., whole blood). Within this article, quantification approaches that have been proposed in the past are critically discussed and compared regarding the results obtained in the applications described. Although a large variety of sample types is discussed within this article, the quantification approaches used are similar for many analytical questions and have only been adapted to the specific questions. Nevertheless, none of them has proven to be a universally applicable method.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Division of Instrumental Analytical Chemistry, TU Wien, Getreidemarkt 9/164, 1060, Vienna, Austria, a.limbeck@tuwien.ac.at.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Limbeck
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Galler
authors.forename: Maximilian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bonta
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bauer
authors.forename: Winfried
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Nischkauer
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vanhaecke