Investigation of atomiser tube design for carbon furnace atomic-emission spectrometry

Abstract

Modifications to a standard graphite furnace tube, designed for atomic-absorption measurements, are shown to give improved performance for atomic-emission measurements of a number of elements. Four different modified tubes are compared with a standard Perkin-Elmer HGA-72 graphite tube with respect to their thermal characteristics and the detection limits of ten selected elements of varying atom-appearance temperatures. Different elements were found to give lowest detection limits in tubes of different design. The results indicate the need for a new approach to tube design, specifically for atomic-emission measurements, in order that best detection limits can be achieved for all elements in a single graphite tube.