A contribution to the study of cooling a vertical-rotary spray chamber in inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometry

Abstract

A Wu–Hieftje vertical-rotary spray chamber was modified for cooling and characterized for its ability to reduce oxide species in inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The temperature of the modified spray chamber could be reproducibly and effectively controlled by wrapping tygon tubing, through which chilled water flows, around the main body. Cooling the spray chamber from 20 °C to 5 °C yielded a 20% reduction in the interfering oxide level of ¹⁴⁰Ce¹⁶O⁺ on ¹⁵⁶Gd⁺ without compromising detection limits. A corresponding decrease in the background-equivalent concentrations of the interfering species was also observed. Additionally, 1/f noise present in plasma-derived signals was less when the temperature of the spray chamber was lowered.