Noise power spectra and recovery rates obtained with different nebulizer systems in ICP atomic emission spectrometric analyses in the case of different types of salts and salt contents

The features of different nebulizer systems (cross-flow-, Meinhard- and GMK-system) in the ICP atomic emission spectrometric analyses of solutions with different contents of different salts were evaluated. As basis for the comparison of the nebulizer systems the recovery rates and noise power spectra were used. Both showed that the GMK-system could be used for the widest diversity of salts (sodium chloride, ammonium sulfate and sodium tetraborate) and concentration range (0–10% (m/v)) followed by the cross-flow-system and the Meinhard-system in ICP-OES using a 1 kW argon ICP. Of all nebulizer systems the nebulizer according to Meinhard has the lowest performance for the salts investigated. The noise power spectra of all nebulizer systems are dominated by interference noise from the sample introduction system. This noise increases with the salt concentration of the solution and the GMK-system shows the lowest increase, followed by the cross-flow- and Meinhard-system. Received: 11 October 1999 / Revised: 5 January 2000 / Accepted: 14 January 2000