Improving precision for laser solid sampling for ICP emission with an array spectrometer

An Excimer laser operating at the wavelength of 308 nm has been used to ablate soil for bulk analysis. The ablated material has been transferred to an array ICP emission spectrometer. In order to avoid a degraded reproducibility due to imhomogeneity, repetitive firings along a sampling line have been done at a firing frequency of 3 Hz. Effects of line length, read delay and internal standardization have been studied.