'Tandem' versus 'Combined' sources in atomic skpectrometry

摘要

There appears to have arisen in the literature some confusion surrounding the terms "tandem sources," "combined sources," and others that are commonly used to designate two or more ievices that are combined in series for use in atomic spectrometric analysis. This comment is to outline the more significant points of current confusion and to propose an arrangement for resolving them. Borer and Hieftje [ 1] defined the concept of a "tandem source" and proposed a scheme for categorizing different kinds.By their definition, the first source in a tandem pair produces free atoms and/or fragments of molecules that are amenable to enter the second source without a change in their state. The second source then serves to excite or ionize those species for emission or mass-spectrometric analysis, respectively.