An Effective Oxide Interference Correction on Sc and REE for Routine Analyses of Geological Samples by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry

Oxide interference correction plays a vital role in the accurate determination of trace element compositions of geological samples by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). In this study, we found that the oxide production is mainly controlled by the gas flow of the ICP-MS and a constant oxide correction factor (OCF) can be measured during a routine analysis. Thus, we can obtain the oxide production by just investigating the gas flow for a fixed ICP-MS system with monitoring of OCF. Si, Ba and LREE oxide interferences on the Sc, Eu and Gd of four geological standard samples GSP-2, JP-1, GBW03112 and GBW03113 were corrected by such method and the results were in good agreement with the recommended values. Therefore, the present study provides a simple and fast correction method for the oxide interferences of the geological samples during the routine analyses. Furthermore, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet template integrating the correction equations was developed in an in-house software (ICPMSDataCal) for effective calibration.