Development and evaluation of high resolution quadrupole mass analyzer and an inductively coupled plasma-Mach disk

Abstract

By definition a plasma is an electrically conducting gaseous mixture containing a significant concentration of cations and electrons. The Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) is an electrodeless discharge in a gas at atmospheric pressure. This discharge is an excellent one for vaporizing, atomizing, and ionizing elements. The early development of the ICP began in 1942 by Babat and then by Reed in the early 1960s. This was then followed by the pioneering work of Fassel and coworkers in the late 1960s. Commercial ICP spectrometers were introduced in the mid 1970s. A major breakthrough in the area of ICP took place in the early 1980s when the ICP was shown to be an excellent ion source for mass spectrometry