Vapour-phase temperature measurements in the evaluation of platform designs for graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

Four different platform designs, standard, T, fork and pin, have been tested to characterise their performance. The following criteria have been used: reproducibility between different platform-tube combinations of the same type; sensitivity; vapour-phase temperatures; and susceptibility to interference effects. It is shown that the vapour-phase temperatures correlate with the analytical performance of platform-tube combinations and that further work is required in order to identify the best platform design.