ICP-OES and ICP-MS

Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry / Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

• Perkin Elmer Optima 5300 DV ICP-OES
• Agilent 7500ce ICP-MS
• Agilent 1200 series HPLC (can hook up to ICP-MS)
• Both instruments are equipped with autosamplers

Overview

ICP is a method of breaking chemical samples down to their component atoms and ions.

Samples must be solvated or able to be solvated. The instruments are compatible with a wide range of solvents (or "matrices").

Its main advantage over alternative techniques is the low level of background readings from the instrument itself.

ICP-OES is suitablefor the trace analysis of metal elements (0.0002-1000ppm) and a limited number of non-metallic elements (e.g. S, P).

The OES instrument can measure the relative amounts of up to 60 elements per single sample run of less than one minute.

ICP-MS. The ICP source fragments chemicals in a different way to other MS techniques, making ICP-MS particularly suitable for isotope ratio studies.

ICP-MS is suitable for the ultra trace analysis of metal elements (0.0005-100ppb), and a limited number of non-metallic elements (e.g. S, P). The technique is unusually sensitive to the method of sample preparation.

LC-ICP-MS is suitable for speciated metal analysis and compounds with metals bound that are separable by LC techniques. (e.g. metal binding in proteins).

Contacts

External enquiries should be directed to Ian Sharp or Dr Lorna Eades (lorna.eades@ed.ac.uk).