Characteristics of flow injection inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for trace metal analysis

Abstract

The application of flow injection (FI) as a method of sample introduction to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer is described. It is shown that FI can alleviate problems arising from high salt content, viscosity and high acid concentration in inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The capability to operate with microlitre amounts of sample with a rapid sampling rate is clearly demonstrated. Biological certified reference materials were analysed by FI-ICP-MS for lead with external calibration and by isotope dilution analysis (IDA). Good agreement with certified values was obtained with both methods. Flow injection ICP-MS was used to analyse powdered food (mixed diet) samples for lead with IDA and to determine zinc isotope ratios in microlitre samples of blood.