Microwave-induced plasma-optical emission spectrometry - fundamental aspects and applications in metal speciation analysis

In the first part of this review, a summary is given of the historical development and fundamental aspects of microwave-induced plasmas (MIPs) and their physical properties. The different methods for temperature and electron density measurements are used to explain the basic concepts and the implications for their application to analytical chemistry. The various types and modifications of MIPs are briefly described and classified in their plasma-spectrochemical context. The second part focuses on the applications of MIPs combined with optical emission spectrometry (OES) for metal speciation purposes. The combination of MIP-OES with different chromatographic and electrophoretic separation techniques has potential, but also limitations, which are outlined and described using several applications which are documented in the literature. Using these examples, the development of a new hyphenated technique based on MIP-OES is indicated. (C) 2000 published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.