Impact of non-linear heating on electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

An experimental system was designed with the capability to heat a graphite furnace with controlled, non-linear temperature programs. Several non-linear temperature programs were used to study their impact on the absorbance profiles of two elements, Au and Cu. It was found that the integrated areas for a given concentration are equivalent and thus calibration curves, using these non-linear temperature programs, are also equivalent. Two non-linear temperature programs, with more drastic non-linearities, were also designed to study the impact of non-linearity on the calculated activation energies from Arrhenius-type plots. Correctly measuring the non-linear temperatures, activation energies show no variance when using these non-linear temperature programs.