Effect of dwell time on single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry data acquisition quality

Abstract

The characterization, sizing, and quantification of metal-based nanoparticles (NP) in a variety of matrices using single particle-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is becoming increasingly popular due to the sensitive nature of the technique. Nanoparticle events in the plasma are less than 0.5 ms in duration; however current quadrupole-based ICP-MS instruments are limited to instrument dwell times in the millisecond range and have data acquisition overhead that adversely affects data quality. Novel instrument settings and data processing techniques can be used to explore the benefits of continuous data acquisition rates as fast as 10⁵ Hz (or 10 μs dwell times). This paper provides data on the different effects data acquisition rate has on the quality of data that can be obtained by SP-ICP-MS. The effect of varying the dwell time and its influence on particle integration, particle counting, particle sizing, and background signal is discussed. This paper provides data on identifying the significant instrument settings and their implications on nanoparticle characterization.