Water-jacketed spray chamber

Water-jacketed spray chambers have been shown to be helpfid in reducing oxide signals [668], as well as the 1// noise component on the signals [669]. Sanz-Medel and coworkers [670] found that the isotope ratio precisions and accuracies of TOF-ICP-MS surpassed those of quadmpole-based systems. This was impressively demonstrated in the case of Pb by Carrion et al. [671], who reported RSDs of 0.08% for... 

Longerich H. P. and Diegoe W. (2001) Evaluation of a water-jacketed spray chamber using time-of-flight inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (TOF-ICP-MS), J. Anal. At. Spectrom. 16 1196-1201. 

Spray chambers can be cooled via a water jacket or Peltier cooling to reduce the amount of solvent vapor introduced into the ICP [31, 32). A further reduction in the amount of solvent introduced can be realized via a desolvation system. Traditionally, such a desolvation system consisted of a sequence of a heated and a cooled tube. In the heated tube, the solvent is vaporized, after which it condenses on the inner wall of the cooled tube and is thus removed. Nowadays, desolvation systems equipped with a membrane desolvator are often used [33, 34). These basically consist of a tube manufactured from a semipermeable porous material, around which heated Ar gas is flowing in the opposite direction to the sample aerosol flow. The solvent is vaporized, and the gaseous solvent molecules leave the central tube via the pores and are carried off by the heated Ar flow. Desolvation of the sample aerosol can lead to an 10-fold increase in signal intensity. For rather volatile analyte elements, (partial) analyte loss needs to be taken into account [35]. 

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