Abstract

This Atomic Spectrometry Update is the latest in an annual series appearing under the title ‘Industrial Analysis’. Due to changes in the abstracting system that the ASU reviews depend upon, there has been a slight change in the quantity and quality of the abstracts that were presented to the writing team this year. For most of the review no significant changes have occurred. However, for several specialised topics such as Glasses and Catalysts the amount of information has both increased in relevance and quantity. In contrast Table 3 is reduced this year due to the abstracting changes. Hopefully, more refinements of the new system will bring in more benefits as to the quality of the review in the coming years.

New developments in solid sample introduction continue to be reported both for ferrous and non-ferrous metal analysis. The technique that has shown much promise in this area is laser induced breakdown spectrometry (LIBS) and several interesting reports were received.

In contrast to the 2000 review, where petroleum additives were a hot topic, only one paper referring to petroleum additives was received. Solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) has also been employed in conjunction with Raman spectroscopy to determine the petroleum contamination of water. The analysis of coal in this review period is split mainly into two areas: the analysis of total trace metals in the coal and the determination of elements which raise environmental concerns.

Papers detailing pre-concentration using various functionalised resins, e.g., XAD-2 and XAD-16, solid phase extraction and various organic chemicals have a large contribution to this year's review. This year there has been a more general application of analytical techniques for analysis of inorganic materials. As in previous years, solid sample analysis has been a prominent feature, with the development of a portable XRF device, several ETA-AAS studies and some interesting secondary ion mass spectrometry work being reported.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), in each of its variants, continues to be the dominant technique in the application of analytical atomic spectroscopy to the analysis of nuclear materials.

One point for avid review readers is the quantity of rare earth element papers mentioned in Table 3 this year. This may be due to either the new abstracting system or to the fact that our colleagues who publish in this area around the world are growing weary of this field of research.