A new design of the two-component atomizer for the direct determination of medium and volatile elements in high-purity solid refractory metals by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

摘要

A new type of two-component atomizer has been designed and constructed for direct analysis of high purity materials, because conventional systems for solid sample analysis by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry suffer from enhanced contamination risk and from indirect heating up of the sample carrier. The new prototype consists of two separate components: an upper transversely heated graphite tube/atom reservoir and a lower longitudinally heated graphite rod/sample carrier/ atomizer. The carrier/atomizer is equipped with a cylindrical cavity for positioning a sample. The design of the sample carrier and the mode of operation prevents the contamination of the "hot" cavity part from tools, a balance pan or atomizer components. In this way, absolute detection limits for medium and volatile elements in the overall solid sampling routine could be improved by about one order of magnitude down to the sub-ppb level, comparing conventional techniques and the new system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. [References: 20]