Extension of working range in Zeeman graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry by nonlinear calibration with prior correction for stray light

Abstract

The nonlinear working range of a Perkin-Elmer 4100Zl atomic absorption spectrometer was improved in three steps. Firstly, each absorbance datum within the transient profile was corrected for the presence of stray light by an algorithm originally developed by L'vov and co-workers (Spectrochim. Acta Part B, 47 (1992) 889–895 and 1187–1202), but with the incorporation of the Newton method of successive approximations (Spectrochim. Acta Part B, 49 (1994) 1643–1656. Secondly, a dip correction procedure was performed on temporal signal profiles that exhibited a dip due to rollover. In the final step, an analytically useful working curve was generated by the nonlinear calibration routine of Barnett (Spectrochim. Acta Part B, 39 (1984) 829). Goodness of fit between the resultant calibration curve and the data was measured by the method suggested by Miller-Ihli et al. (Spectrochim. Acta Part B, 39 (1984) 1603) that is based on the sum of squares of the percentage deviation (SSPD) and the root mean square (RMS) percentage deviation. For lead, silver, copper, thallium, and cadmium, the analytical nonlinear working range was increased by as much as one and a half orders of magnitude, without any significant effect on the RMS. For chromium and manganese, no significant improvement in the nonlinear working range was observed, while the RMS improved by 50%. In the case of nickel, neither the working range nor the RMS was improved.