Sampling Cups, Boats, and Related Techniques

From the late 1960s onwards, a number of research groups around the world began to investigate alternatives to pneumatic nebulization for sample introduction, in an attempt to overcome transport efficiency limitations. The most successful approaches were those which involved heating small, discrete liquid samples, and sometimes even solid samples, directly on a metal filament, boat, or cup which could be positioned reproducibly into a flame. However, since the temperature of the metal would be lower than that of the flame itself, the techniques were confined to the determination of relatively easily atomized elements such as arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, selenium, silver, tellurium, thallium, and zinc. 

Khan and colleagues,13 for example, used a 50 mm long tantalum boat which 

Kirkbright and M. Sargent, Atomic Absorption and Fluorescence Spectroscopy , Academic Press, London, 1974. 

in Atomic Absorption Spectrometry Theory, Design, and Applications , ed. S.J. Haswell, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991, p. 275. 

---