Selected applications of laser ablation sampling prior to atomization-ionization-excitation-detection

Selected applications of laser ablation sampling prior to atomization-ionization-excitation-detection 

Analyte sensitivity as reported for different instruments is mainly influenced by the experimental crater size, energy density and repetition rate, which influence the amount of ablated and transported material. Normalizing sensitivities obtained with a similar energy density to a crater diameter of 40 pm and a repetition rate of 10 Hz leads to rather equal sensitivities of ca. 1000-3000 cps/ng for most commercially available instruments. The ensuing limits of detection are thus influenced mainly by background noise. 

There has been sustained interest in the development of analytical methods for realtime monitoring of environmental pollutants in recent years. Semi-volatile organic compounds tend to be adsorbed onto the surface of aerosol particles of respirable sizes and pose potential health hazards. Conventional methods used for the analysis of organic compounds that are present on the surface of aerosol particles are based on particle collection followed by extraction and chromatographic analysis of extracted species [90,91]. These methods require large amounts of sample and long analysis times. 

One unusual application of LA-ICP-MS is for fingerprinting scene-of-crime evidence. The combination of this technique with ternary-plot pattern-recognition software was used to determine the origin of samples of steel (e.g. from safes, gun barrels, tools) and glass (e.g. floats, sheets, containers) [115]. 

Calibration using powder reference materials was possible for sintered ceramics. A very similar publication by the same authors, but in Japanese, was later reported [117]. 

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