TY - JOUR A1 - Phukphatthanachai, Pranee A1 - Vogl, Jochen A1 - Traub, Heike A1 - Jakubowski, Norbert A1 - Panne, Ulrich T1 - A new approach of using polyethylene frits for the quantification of sulphur in copper metals by isotope dilution LA-ICP-MS and comparison with conventional IDMS techniques N2 - Polyethylene (PE) frits were used to quantify sulphur in copper and its alloys by isotope dilution combined with LA-ICP-MS as an alternative approach to conventional sample preparation: the copper samples were spiked, the spiked samples were dissolved, the resulting solutions were absorbed in the PE frits and finally the PE frits were analysed by LA-ICP-MS. A prerequisite for such a support material is a low sulphur blank and thus PE was selected for this purpose. The absorption efficiency of the PE frits was studied for varying sulphur amounts ranging from 2 mg S to 80 mg S showing that more than 99.5% of the loaded sulphur was absorbed by the frit. The so prepared PE frits were measured by LA-ICP-MS and yielded a good linearity (R2 ¼ 0.999) for the sulphur ion intensities corresponding to sulphur amounts up to 40 mg S; the associated sensitivity is approximately 3.4 x 10⁴ cps μg⁻¹ for ³²S. For the validation of the developed procedure the reference materials BAM-M376a, BAM-228 and BAM-227 were applied such that 2 μg S, 5 μg S and 11 μg S were absorbed in the PE frits, respectively. These samples were pre-quantified for the adsorbed sulphur amount by external calibration LA-ICP-MS yielding sulphur amounts of 0.9 μg, 5.1 μg and 8.5 μg (quantified for ³²S only), respectively. Relative Standard deviations of the isotope ratios were below 5% in average (n ¼ 3 lines) in all cases (except for the pure spike solution). These samples were then analysed by LA-ICP-IDMS and the measurement results were validated by comparing them with the results obtained by conventional ICP-IDMS. The obtained relative expanded measurement uncertainties ranged between 10% and 26%. Pearson's coefficient was used to express the correlation between both techniques; the obtained value was 0.999 demonstrating a strong correlation. Contrary to most published LA-ICP-IDMS procedures, the developed procedure enables SI-traceability for the measurement results. The metrological traceability to the SI for the sulphur mass fractions in copper was established by an unbroken chain of comparisons, each accompanied by an uncertainty budget. Thus, the measurement results are considered reliable, acceptable and comparable within the stated measurement uncertainty. The metrological traceability chain from the kg down to mass fraction in the samples obtained by LA-ICP-IDMS is presented as well. KW - Laser ablation KW - IDMS KW - Traceability KW - Uncertainty KW - Purity PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/c8ja00116b SN - 0267-9477 SN - 1364-5544 VL - 33 IS - 9 SP - 1506 EP - 1517 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Cambridge AN - OPUS4-45899 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Phukphatthanachai, Pranee A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Jakubowski, Norbert A1 - Vogl, Jochen T1 - SI-traceable quantification of sulphur in copper metal and its alloys by ICP-IDMS N2 - Previously applied methods for the quantification of sulphur in copper and other pure metals revealed a lack of SI-traceability and additionally showed inconsistent results, when different methods were compared. Therefore, a reference procedure is required which allows SI-traceable values accompanied by a Sound uncertainty budget. In this study a procedure was developed for the quantification of total sulphur in copper at low concentration levels using inductively coupled plasma-isotope dilution mass spectrometry (ICP-IDMS). The major part of the copper matrix was separated by adding ammonia which forms a complex with the copper while releasing the sulphur followed by chromatographic separation using a weak cation resin. After that the sulphur fraction was further purified by chromatographic means using first an anion exchange method and second a chelating resin. The developed procedure shows high performance, especially concerning high efficiency in matrix removal (>99.999%) while keeping the recovery of sulphur above 80%. Procedure blanks are in the order of 3–53 ng resulting in LOD and LOQ values of 0.2 mg g1 and 0.54 mg g1, respectively. The procedure is sufficient to facilitate value assignment of the total sulphur mass fraction in reference materials. Additionally, relative measurement uncertainties were calculated to be below 1% and the measurement results were traceable to the SI. The procedure reported in this study is a new reference procedure for sulphur measurement in copper, being fit for two major purposes, certification of reference materials and assignment of reference values for inter-laboratory comparison. KW - Traceability KW - Measuremment uncertainty KW - Isotope dilution mass spectrometry KW - Reference measurements PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/c7ja00338b SN - 0267-9477 SN - 1364-5544 VL - 33 IS - 1 SP - 90 EP - 101 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Cambridge, UK AN - OPUS4-43614 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Phukphatthanachai, P. A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Traub, Heike A1 - Pfeifer, Jens A1 - Vogl, Jochen T1 - Quantification of sulphur in copper and copper alloys by GDMS and LA-ICP-MS, demonstrating metrological traceability to the international system of units N2 - The quantification of the sulphur mass fraction in pure copper and copper alloys by GDMS and LA-ICP-MS revealed a lack of traceability mainly due to a lack of suitable certified reference materials for calibrating the instruments. Within this study GDMS and LA-ICP-MS were applied as routine analytical tools to quantify sulphur in copper samples by applying reference materials as calibrators, which were characterized for their sulphur mass fraction by IDMS beforehand. Different external calibration strategies were applied including a matrix cross type calibration. Both techniques with all calibration strategies were validated by using certified reference materials (others than those used for calibration) and good agreement with the reference values was achieved except for the matrix cross type calibration, for which the agreement was slightly worse. All measurement results were accompanied by an uncertainty statement. For GDMS, the relative expanded (k = 2) measurement uncertainty ranged from 3% to 7%, while for LA-ICP-MS it ranged from 11% to 33% when applying matrix-matched calibration in the sulphur mass fraction range between 25 mg kg-1 and 1300 mg kg-1. For cross-type calibration the relative expanded (k = 2) measurement uncertainty need to be increased to at least 12% for GDMS and to at least 54% for LA-ICP-MS to yield metrological compatibility with the reference values. The so obtained measurement results are traceable to the international system of units (SI) via IDMS reference values, which is clearly illustrated by the unbroken chain of calibrations in the metrological traceability scheme. KW - Sulfur KW - Copper KW - GDMS KW - LA-ICP-MS KW - Uncertainty KW - Traceability KW - SI PY - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/d1ja00137j SN - 0267-9477 VL - 36 IS - 11 SP - 2404 EP - 2414 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry AN - OPUS4-53412 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -