Hydrogen Hβ line as an internal standard in inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry

An internal standard element has generally been employed to obtain accurate analytical results in inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). This paper describes the possibility of hydrogen H-beta line (486.13 nm) being used as an internal standard line in ICP-OES. For this purpose, the relative intensities of a V II emission line were measured under various conditions when the H-beta line as well as the Y II 371.03-nm line were employed as the internal standard. The intensity variation of the V II line could be corrected more accurately by using the H-beta line rather than the Y II line. It should be noted that the intensity of the H-beta line is relatively weak and is easily affected by background emissions, which may lead to a large error in the estimation of the H-beta line intensity. Nevertheless, the H-beta line would be useful to correct for any variations of the sample amount introduced into ICP. The H-beta internal standard was applied to the determination of alloyed elements in Cu-In-Sn, Mo-Si-B, and Ge-Cr-Al-Ce-Sn.