Abstract

A novel hydride atomizer, called a multiple microflame quartz tube atomizer, is described. A preliminary evaluation of its performance based on a comparison with the commonly employed externally heated quartz tube atomizer is presented. Selenium hydride is used as the analyte and arsine as the interferent. It is demonstrated that the multiple microflame quartz tube atomizer retains the most important advantage of the commonly employed externally heated quartz tube atomizer, the high sensitivity, and substantially reduces its fundamental disadvantages: the poor resistance to atomization interferences and unsatisfactory linearity of the calibration graphs.