Mixed Gas Helium/Argon Low-Power/Reduced-Pressure ICP as a Tunable Ionization Source for the Mass Spectrometric Detection of Organotin Compounds

Abstract

Quantitative and qualitative mass spectrometric results have been obtained for organotin compounds introduced into a mixed gas He/Ar low-power/reduced-pressure (LP/RP) inductively coupled plasma (ICP). Molecular fragmentation of 10 mg kg⁻¹ of tetraethyltin (TET), introduced by gas chromatography (GC), with respect to pressure and mixed gas composition of the LP/RP-ICP was observed. Detection limits for the organotin compounds introduced into an LP/RP-He/Ar ICP at the pressure producing the optimum analyte signal were in the low picogram range. The source demonstrated “tunable” fragmentation with variation in the helium/argon mixed gas ratio. In addition, tunable fragmentation with pressure variations similar to that achieved previously with helium radio-frequency glow discharge (He-rf-GD) was observed with the LP/RP-He ICP.

Keywords

Reduced-pressure plasma Helium/argon ICP Mass spectrometry Capillary gas chromatography Speciation

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