A rate model of inductively coupled argon plasma analyte spectra

A model which explicitly considers the various rates of excitation, deexcitation, ionization and recombination for analyte species in an ICAP of defined electron density and temperature is presented. The model reveals that radiative decay, radiative recombination and radiative absorption affect the level populations of a fundamentally collisionally dominated plasma. In addition. Penning ionization is shown to have a negligible effect on spectrally derived temperatures except for elements of high second ionization potential.