A compact electrothermal-flame tandem atomizer for highly sensitive atomic fluorescence spectrometry

A novel compact tandem atomizer is described and evaluated for its analytical performance using atomic fluorescence spectrometry (AFS). The atomizer simply comprises an argon-hydrogen (Ar-H-2) flame atomizer and an electrothermal atomization/vaporization (ETV) sampling device, which utilizes a tungsten coil (W-coil) onto which a liquid sample is pipetted, and subsequently the analyte is electrothermally atomized/vaporized and swept directly into the highly reducing environment of the Ar-H-2 flame atomizer for further atomization and detection. The flame sits directly on top of the W-coil without any interface tubing. Improvements in elemental coverage, sensitivity and minimization of analyte loss as well as reduction of reagent consumption were simultaneously achieved by the use of this technique. The absolute limits of detection (LODs) are comparable to those obtained by GF-AAS but provide significant improvements over FAAS and ICP-OES. Its application example was demonstrated by analyzing several Certified Reference Materials and environmental water samples for ultratrace Cd, Pb, Au and Ag.