Highly sensitive elemental analysis for Cd and Pb by liquid electrode plasma atomic emission spectrometry with quartz glass chip and sample flow.

This paper describes the development of a highly sensitive liquid-electrode plasma atomic emission spectrometry (LEP-AES) by combination of quartz glass chip and sample flow system. LEP-AES is an ultracompact elemental analysis method, in which the electroconductive sample solution is put into a microfluidic channel whose center is made narrower (∼100 μm in width). When high voltage pulses (1500 V) are applied at both ends of the channel, the sample evaporates locally at the narrow part and generates plasma. By the emission from the plasma, elemental concentration is analyzed. In this paper, the limits of detection (LODs) were investigated in various conditions of accumulation time, material of the chip, and the sample flow. It was found that the long accumulation using the quartz chip with sample flow was effective to improve LOD. Authors suggested that this was because bubbles remaining after each plasma pulse were removed from the narrow channel by sample flow, resulting in highly reproducible plasma generation, to enable a high accumulation effect. Finally, LODs were calculated from a calibration curve, to be 0.52 μg/L for Cd and 19.0 μg/L for Pb at optimized condition. Sub-ppb level LOD was achieved for Cd.