Eichrom’s expertise in metal separations provides a number of opportunities to solve analytical problems through sample preparation. As the market leader in extraction chromatography, Eichrom’s “toolbox” is full of products and methodologies to enhance the performance of your AAS, ICP and ICP-MS. We also supply a wide range of ion exchange resins, from industry standard cation and anion exchange resins, to proprietary chelating resins that have unusual selectivity for higher valence transition metals. With our broad offering of products and a long experience base in metal separations, Eichrom can help you meet lower detection limits with less uncertainty.

Quite often, the problems encountered are centered on removing matrix that interferes with the instrumental measurement. ICP-MS is an example. Many elements in the sample injected into the plasma can corrode the cones, reducing cone lifetime and interfering with quantitation of the analyte. Selectivity for the analyte of interest is important in this case. Our application note, AN502, Determination of Thorium in High Purity Aluminum by ICP-MS, highlights the use of Eichrom’s TEVA Resin to isolate ultra-trace amounts of Th from the bulk of the aluminum matrix.

In the case of ICP-AES, sometimes matrix components have interfering atomic emissions that cause quantitation problems. In some cases, the overlapping emission lines result in high biases. While software can sometimes correct for these interferences, in some cases it overcorrects, resulting in a low bias in the analytical result. Sample preparation to remove the spectrally interfering elements is a way to ensure that the analytical results are accurate.

Beryllium is typically measured by ICP-AES, however, certain metals like V, Zr, U and Ce have spectrally interfering emission lines. At some Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, where samples may contain high levels of actinide elements, including uranium, the use of ICP-AES to measure beryllium can become problematic. Software corrections for uranium emission lines tend to overcorrect resulting in low Be biases. Vanadium on the other hand tends to cause a high bias in the beryllium results. These interferences (among others) can be removed in sample preparation by using Eichrom’s Beryllium Resin to isolate the beryllium. This method is discussed in our application note, AN602 Beryllium analysis-matrix removal for more reliable ICP-AES analysis.

Further applications for analytical of Pb, actinides, Sr and other metals are highlighted in our application note section.