Amazingly, 18 years after the commercialization of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), less than 4000 systems have been installed worldwide. If you compare this number with another rapid multielement technique, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), first commercialized in 1974, the difference is quite significant. In 1992, 18 years after ICP-OES was introduced, more than 9000 units had been sold, and if you compare it with the same time period that ICP-MS has been available, the difference is even more dramatic. From 1983 to the present day, more than 17,000 ICP-OES systems have been installed — more than four times the number of ICP-MS systems. If the comparison is made with all atomic spectroscopy instrumentation (ICP-MS, ICPOES, graphite furnace atomic absorption [GFAA] and flame atomic absorption [FAA]), the annual turnover for ICP-MS is less than 7% of the total atomic spectroscopy market — 400 units compared to approximately 6000 atomic spectroscopy systems. It’s even more surprising when you consider that ICP-MS offers so much more than the other techniques, including two of its most attractive features — the rapid multielement capabilities of ICP-OES, combined with the superb detection limits of GFAA. ICP-MS — ROUTINE OR RESEARCH? Clearly, one of the reasons is price — an ICP-MS system typically costs twice as much as an ICP-OES system and three times more than a GFAA system. But in a competitive world, the “street price” of an ICP-MS system is much closer to a top-ofthe- line ICP-OES system fitted with sampling accessories or a GFAA system that has all the bells and whistles on it. So if ICP-MS is not significantly more expensive than ICP-OES and GFAA, why hasn’t it been more widely accepted by the analytical community? I firmly believe that the major reason why ICP-MS has not gained the popularity of the other trace element techniques is that it is still considered a complicated research technique, requiring a very skilled person to operate it. Manufacturers of ICP-MS equipment are constantly striving to make the systems easier to operate, the software easier to use, and the hardware easier to maintain, but even after 18 years it is still not perceived as a mature, routine tool like flame AA or ICP-OES. This might be partially true because of the relative complexity of the instrumentation; however, in my opinion, the dominant reason for this misconception is that there has not been good literature available explaining the basic principles and benefits of ICP-MS in a way that is compelling and easy to understand for someone with very little knowledge of the technique. Some excellent textbooks (1, 2) and numerous journal papers (3–5) are available that describe the fundamentals, but they tend to be far too heavy for a novice reader. There is no question in my mind that the technique needs to be presented in a more user-friendly way to make routine analytical laboratories more comfortable with it. Unfortunately, the publishers of the “for Dummies” series of books have not yet found a mass (excuse the pun) market for writing one on ICPMS. So until that time, we will be presenting a number of short tutorials on the technique, as a follow-up to the poster that was included in the February 2001 issue of Spectroscopy. During the next few months, we will be discussing the following topics in greater depth: • principles of ion formation • sample introduction • plasma torch/radio frequency generator • interface region • ion focusing • mass separation • ion detection • sampling accessories • applications. We hope that by the end of this series, we will have demystified ICP-MS, made it Figure 1. Generation of positively charged ions in the plasma.
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