Metal analysis in solution with micro plasma atomic emission spectroscopy

Metal analysis with inductively coupled argon plasma as in ICP-OES and ICP-MS are expensive to run because of high cost for argon. When Agilent Technologies released the MP 4100 in 2011 the first commercially available atomic emission instrument with a microwave plasma (MP AES) running on nitrogen was put on the market. The nitrogen can be supplied from a gas generator. This project compares the performance of the MP for sample matrices that ranges from drinking water to digests of rocks and plants. For most metals studied so far there is no difference between MP AES and ICP-MS at concentrations exceeding some 20 ppb. This requires, however, that the influence of spectral and chemical interferences is corrected for in the MP AES.