Communication. Long-term stability of a mixed palladium–iridium trapping reagent for in situ hydride trapping within a graphite electrothermal atomizer

Abstract

For hydride trapping and atomization in a graphite electrothermal atomizer the treatment of a pyrolytic graphite coated electrographite tube with a single, manual application of a mixed trapping reagent of 50 µg of palladium and 50 µg of iridium allows up to 300 complete trapping and atomization cycles. Precision is generally better than 3% and the efficiency of trapping is virtually 100% for As, Se and Bi. The application of this mixed palladium–iridium trapping reagent improves the routine use of this technique and considerably simplifies the hardware and software requirements to provide a fully automatic system.