Abstract

This Atomic Spectrometry Update is the latest in an annual series appearing under the title `Industrial Analysis'. This year's review has followed the changed format introduced last year. Further changes may be made in the near future to reflect the growing interest in certain areas such as semiconductor materials and a continuing decrease in technical advances being reported under other traditional headings.

There has been considerable interest in XRF as a tool for the non-destructive analysis of metallic art and historical objects. Laser ablation continues to be explored for metal analysis. Laser ablation ICP-AES was used to differentiate between coins from different countries based on the elemental composition profiles (or fingerprints).

Improvements to XRF instrumentation and methodology have meant that analysis of used oil reported via this technique is on the increase. The analysis of coal and its by-products once again dominates the Fuels section. Various sample preparation procedures and a host of different analytical techniques have been used for its analysis. Pre-concentration using on-line column techniques coupled with atomic spectrometry is very important for trace metal determination. 8-Hydroxyquinoline (8HQ) has been thoroughly investigated and reported by many as an excellent chelating agent for organic based solutions.

There have been some interesting developments this year which impact on inorganic chemicals analysis in industrial applications, particularly in ICP-MS. Elimination and reduction of spectral interferences using collision cell technology in ICP-MS is becoming a commercial reality, as evidenced by an increasing number of papers dealing with the technique.

Materials Control and Accountancy (MCA) is of utmost importance in the nuclear industry. Analysis, undertaken for the purposes of MCA, provides a `Gold Standard' for any laboratory in terms of accuracy, precision and reliability. This crucial area has seen some development in the period covered by this review for nuclear materials analysis.

This year, coupling to a variety of detectors has proved to be a popular use of ETV for the analysis of refractory samples. Finally, one major disappointment and surprise this year has been the lack of high quality papers and articles which could be selected to grace our Catalysts section.