TY - JOUR A1 - Richter, Silke A1 - Sargent, M. A1 - Schiel, D. A1 - Kipphardt, Heinrich T1 - Known purity - the fundament of element determination by atomic spectrometry N2 - Millions of measurements are performed each year by liquid based analytical atomic spectrometry to support healthcare, diagnostic tests, environmental monitoring, material assay, product development and safety. Despite the effort to develop absolute methods, most methods still depend on calibration solutions, which are gravimetric mixtures of high purity solvents and high purity (source material) metals or compounds. As in the real world ideal purity does not exist, the impurity of the solvent and the purity of the source material needs to be known. The impurity of a solvent with respect to one analyte can be measured rather easily and with low limits of determination. In contrast the measurement of the purity of the source material, i.e., the mass fraction of the main constituent in a high purity metal, is more difficult to determine. It becomes even more difficult when the source material is not a pure metal but a compound since problems regarding stoichiometry arise additionally. Although the major producers of calibration solutions make a special effort to determine the purity of the source material, the actual purity statement is often incomplete or not demonstrated. The main reason for this situation is the complexity and high effort necessary to fully characterize such a material. This problem holds to a very wide extent also for the primary standards for element determination at the National Metrology Institutes and Designated Institutes (NMIs and DIs). It is the task of the NMIs and DIs to realise and disseminate primary standards for providing traceability to the International System of Units (SI). The primary elemental standards at the NMIs should provide the link to secondary standards produced by commercial producers and other independently prepared standards for element determination. Without such primary standards, elemental calibration solutions may vary and, depending on the uncertainty required, comparability of measurement in time and space results cannot be achieved. KW - Traceability KW - Metrology KW - Atomic spectrometry KW - Primary reference materials PY - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/c3ja90045b SN - 0267-9477 SN - 1364-5544 VL - 28 IS - 10 SP - 1540 EP - 1543 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - London AN - OPUS4-30301 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogl, Jochen A1 - Kipphardt, Heinrich A1 - Richter, Silke A1 - Bremser, Wolfram A1 - Arvizu Torres, M. A1 - Lara Manzano, J. A1 - Buzoianu, M. A1 - Hill, S. A1 - Petrov, P. A1 - Goenaga-Infante, H. A1 - Sargent, M. A1 - Fisicaro, P. A1 - Labarraque, G. A1 - Zhou, T. A1 - Turk, G. C. A1 - Winchester, M. A1 - Miura, T. A1 - Methven, B. A1 - Sturgeon, R. A1 - Jährling, R. A1 - Rienitz, O. A1 - Mariassy, M. A1 - Hankova, Z. A1 - Sobina, E. A1 - Krylov, A. I. A1 - Kustikov, Y. A. A1 - Smirnov, V. V. T1 - Establishing comparability and compatibility in the purity assessment of high purity zinc as demonstrated by the CCQM-P149 intercomparison N2 - For the first time, an international comparison was conducted on the determination of the purity of a high purity element. Participants were free to choose any analytical approach appropriate for their institute’s applications and services. The material tested was a high purity zinc, which had earlier been assessed for homogeneity and previously used in CCQM-K72 for the determination of six defined metallic impurities. Either a direct metal assay of the Zn mass fraction was undertaken by EDTA titrimetry, or an indirect approach was used wherein all impurities, or at least the major ones, were determined and their sum subtracted from ideal purity of 100 %, or 1 kg/kg. Impurity assessment techniques included glow discharge mass spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and carrier gas hot extraction/combustion analysis. Up to 91 elemental impurities covering metals, non-metals and semi-metals/metalloids were quantified. Due to the lack of internal experience or experimental capabilities, some participants contracted external laboratories for specific analytical tasks, mainly for the analysis of non-metals. The reported purity, expressed as zinc mass fraction in the high purity zinc material, showed excellent agreement for all participants, with a relative standard deviation of 0.011 %. The calculated reference value, w(Zn) = 0.999 873 kg/kg, was assigned an asymmetric combined uncertainty of + 0.000025 kg/kg and – 0.000028 kg/kg. Comparability amongst participating metrology institutes is thus demonstrated for the purity determination of high purity metals which have no particular difficulties with their decomposition / dissolution process when solution-based analytical methods are used, or which do not have specific difficulties when direct analysis approaches are used. Nevertheless, further development is required in terms of uncertainty assessment, quantification of non-metals and the determination of purity of less pure elements and/or for those elements suffering difficulties with the decomposition process. KW - Purity assessment KW - Direct metal assay KW - Impurity assessment KW - Non-metal analysis KW - High-purity elements KW - SI-traceability PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1681-7575/aaa677 SN - 1681-7575 SN - 0026-1394 VL - 55 IS - 2 SP - 211 EP - 221 PB - Institute of Physics Publishing CY - Bristol AN - OPUS4-44257 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sargent, M A1 - Goenaga-Infante, H A1 - Inagaki, K A1 - Ma, L A1 - Meija, J A1 - Pramann, A A1 - Rienitz, O A1 - Sturgeon, R A1 - Vogl, Jochen A1 - Wang, J A1 - Yang, L T1 - The role of ICP-MS in inorganic chemical metrology N2 - ICP-MS has played a key role in inorganic chemical metrology for 25 years, from the 1993 CIPM feasibility study which led to establishment of the CCQM. Since that time, the Inorganic Analysis Working Group of the CCQM has organised 56 international comparisons involving measurements by ICP-MS and, in a recent comparison, 16 different national institutes submitted their results using the technique. Metrological applications of ICP-MS currently address an enormous range of measurements using a wide variety of instrumentation, calibration strategies and methodologies. This review provides an overview of the ICP-MS field with an emphasis on developments which are of particular relevance to chemical metrology. Examples from CCQM comparisons and the services available from the participants are used to illustrate how the capability and scope of ICP-MS methods have expanded far beyond the expectations of 1993. This is due in part to the research and development Programmes of the national institutes which participate in the CCQM. They have played a key role in advancing new instrumentation and applications for elemental analysis, isotope dilution mass spectrometry, determination of isotopic ratio or composition, and speciation of organometallic compounds. These developments are continuing today, as demonstrated by work in new fields such as heteroatom quantitation of proteins, characterisation and counting of nanoparticles using spICP-MS, and LA-ICP-MS analysis of solid materials. KW - CCQM KW - Metrology KW - Interlaboratory comparison KW - ICP-MS KW - Mass spectrometry KW - Hyphenated KW - Isotope ratio PY - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1681-7575/ab0eac VL - 56 IS - 3 SP - 034005 PB - IOP Publishing AN - OPUS4-47929 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -