Determination of tramp elements in iron and steel by glow discharge mass spectrometry

We examined the capability of Glow Discharge Mass Spectrometry to quantitatively analyze iron and steel for tramp elements at 10 mass ppm or less. We used 28 JSS and NIST standard reference materials to experimentally obtain the RSF (relative sensitivity factor) values for Cu, Zn, As, Sn, Sb, Pb and Bi. Systematic difference between two groups of the samples was found in the RSF values of Sb. Variation of the RSF values was large in Sn, as resulted in RSD being 7.67%, whereas Zn and Bi gave favorable results with RSD within 2%. We confirmed that the GDMS could satisfy the desired 10% accuracy for analyzing iron and steel for most of the tramp elements.