Inductively Coupled Plasma Cavity Ringdown Spectrometry

Abstract

Cavity ringdown spectrometry (CRS) differs from standard atomic absorption methods in that it is a measurement of the rate of light absorption by a sample within a closed optical cavity. The ringdown technique yields a very high sensitivity achieved from a combination of long effective sample pathlengths and relaxed accuracy constraints on the measurement of the decay rate of light in the cavity. While there has been rapid scientific recognition of the potential of cavity ringdown for molecular spectroscopy, there has been no systematic attempt to incorporate the advantages of CRS into an instrument for analytical atomic spectrometry. In this paper, the application of the cavity ringdown method to analytical atomic spectrometry is discussed. In particular, the first theoretical and experimental results concerning the use of CRS for trace analysis in an ICP are presented.