A commercial perspective on the growth and development of the quadrupole ICP-MS market

Abstract

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) has grown rapidly since its commercial introduction in 1983 to become the premier technique for trace metals analysis. While the researchers in academia that pioneered the technique of ICP-MS have become well known, virtually nothing has been written about the role played by scientists working in the instrument companies that commercialized the technique. Certainly the speed of development in the early years of ICP-MS was phenomenal, when viewed retrospectively. In 2006, ICP-MS as a technique has matured: all currently available mainstream ICP-MS instruments perform well for a range of applications and there are few obvious areas where new developments are urgently required. Yet if we consider that the first ICP-MS paper was published in 1980 (R. S. Houk, V. A. Fassel, G. D. Flesch, H. J. Svec, A. L. Gray and C. E. Taylor, Anal. Chem., 1980, 52, 2283–2289), it is incredible to conceive that the first commercial ICP-MS was introduced just 3 years later at Pittcon in 1983, and that the first benchtop ICP-MS was introduced only 11 years after that. This is an account of the work of the manufacturer R&D teams responsible for the development of commercial ICP-MS in the early years, and the design features of the early instruments.