Comparison study of sensitivity factors of elements in glow discharge- & inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

Sensitivity factors of elements by a glow discharge mass spectrometry (GD-MS) were intensively investigated and compared with a laser ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). In case of copper matrix, the sensitivity factor by GD-MS generally decreases with the increase of the mass number of element. The details are a little different between each data measured by Faraday and multiplier detectors. The factor by a multiplier detector drastically decreases with the mass increase in the region of low mass as in Faraday detector's case, but slowly in the high mass region. On the contrast, the sensitivity factor of solution standard by a conventional ICP-MS slowly increases with the increase of elemental mass number even though there are some exceptions such as gold and also the sensitivity factor by a laser ablation ICP-MS generally increases with mass number of element in the specimen of glass type. In case of steel matrix, any definite trends could not be shown in the relationship between the GD-MS's sensitivity factor and elemental mass.