Establishment of Optimum Conditions for ICP Atomic Emission Spectrometry (AES)

Abstract

Several optimization criteria for ICP atomic emission spectrometers have been investigated with respect to precision and sensitivity. The results are discussed with regard to noise characteristics of ICP-AES. For establishing optimum working conditions, shot noise, dark current noise, and all kinds of flicker noise have to be taken into consideration. An empirical criterion for optimization procedures is proposed which covers the relative standard deviations of background and gross signal for high analyte concentration as well as the signal-to-background ratio (SBR). All experiments have been performed with the use of the variable step-size simplex method.