Effect of make-up gas in on-column atomic emission spectrometric detection for capillary gas chromatography
Abstract
The effect of make-up gas was studied for capillary gas chromatography (GC) coupled with on-column atomic emission spectrometric detection (AED), where a 350 kHz plasma was sustained inside the end of a 0.32 mm i.d. capillary GC column. For selective detection of Cl and Br both the plasma background characteristics and elemental responses were stabilized during temperature programmed analysis when 10–15 ml min–1 of helium were added as a make-up gas. In addition, chromatographic peaks were protected against tailing, while Cl and Br were detected at the 4 pg s–1 level.