Round Robin Testing in Support of IPC J-STD-709: Combustion Sample Preparation Methods for Ion Chromatography Analysis of Br and Cl

摘要

This paper will present the results of a round robin study of sample combustion followed by ion chromatography (CIC) to measure the concentration of bromine and chlorine in electronic materials. The study involved ten volunteer testing labs, each analyzing four donated polymeric samples. Its primary objective was to gauge the within-lab and lab-to-lab reproducibility of the IC results obtained using the oxygen bomb and furnace sample combustion methods. The accuracy of sample combustion method was also investigated. Statistical analysis shows the within-lab reproducibility was better for the furnace method while the lab-to-lab reproducibility was better for the oxygen bomb method. In addition, both methods showed good agreement in the results of samples with concentrations around the 1000 ppm threshold. However, neither method proved accurate for very high concentrations of bromine and chlorine. These findings led to a group of recommendation for the analysis of Br and Cl using CIC.