DRIFT technique stability

Figure 9.6. Stability of a lifetime-based fiberoptic oxygen sensor over a period of 100 h of continuous operation. Lifetime techniques are insensitive to the process of photobleaching only in the absence of excited state reactions. Excited state reactions of the sensor-carrier system cause drifts in the observed lifetime with photobleaching. They are avoided by limiting the concentration of the sensor in the carrier. (From Ref. 21 with permission.)...

The use of this technique with a DSP has resulted in a rather compact instrument. It was reported that the development of this technique was aimed to eliminate dependence on many of the drift-prone components and should thereby improve the system stability/29 However, no assessment of it in respect of these aspects was given in the literature. 

A disadvantage of the LR-CPMG detection method is its total insensitivity to field/frequency offset which must be adjusted before a profile measurement and cannot be corrected by means of a simple procedure during an automatic profile measurement. This requires a higher degree of longterm field stability (including any thermal effects) than the other methods. Despite the insensitivity of the technique, in fact, the field may not be allowed to drift too far from resonance where the RF pulses would lose their efficiency (excursions up to about 5 kHz are, however, quite tolerable). 

An advantage of ICP-MS compared to all other atomic mass spectrometric techniques including TIMS is that usually only simple sample preparation (e.g., by microwave induced digestion of solid samples) is necessary. Sample preparation steps for ICP-MS analyses are similar to those of ICP-OES. Concentrated solutions are analyzed after dilution with high purity water only. In order to correct mass drifts of the instrument, an internal standard element like In or Ir with known concentration (e.g., I Op.g 1) is added. The solution is then acidified with HN03 to stabilize the metal ions in aqueous solution. 

Although the basic principles of type III potentiometric sensors are apphcable for gaseous oxide detection, this should not obscure the fact that these sensors still require further development. This is especially true in view of the kinetics of equilibria and charged species transport across the solid electrolyte/electrode interfaces where auxiliary phases exist. Real life situations have shown that, in practice, gas sensors rarely work under ideal equilibrium conditions. The transient response of a sensor, after a change in the measured gas partial pressure, is in essence a non-equilibrium process at the working electrode. Consequently, although this kind of sensor has been studied for almost 20 years, practical problems still exist and prevent its commercialization. These problems include slow response, lack of sensitivity at low concentrations, and lack of long-term stability. " It has been reported " that the auxiliary phases were the main cause for sensor drift, and that preparation techniques for electrodes with auxiliary phases were very important to sensor performance. ... 

The Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) trapping of mass-selected cluster ions is an important emerging technique for the study of ion cluster reactivity. " This technique offers very high resolution and sensitivity. An alternative approach has been used by Brucat et al. who demonstrated that the reactivity of cluster ions can be studied in an experimental configuration identical to that used for the study of neutrals, except that ions are detected directly by pulsed extraction in the time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Other experiments " are exploring the reactions of mass-selected cluster ions in beam-gas-cell or drift-tube type configurations. This approach avoids the problems of mass overlap and offers a direct probe of cluster and cluster-adduct stabilities. For further experimental details, the reader is referred to the references. 

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