Characteristic Concentration and Sensitify

Hi Dana

The way I was originally taught this was that the sensitivity in flame-aas referred to the concentration of that element that gave a signal of 0.2. The characteristic concentration is the concentration of that element equal to an absorbance of 0.0044 (99% T). As to which one is more important. To me characteristic concentration is more related to the detection limit though others may disagree. When carrying out analyses with flame-aas I always look at the sensitivity on the day verses that expected to get an idea of how the analysis on that day

Kevin

Hi Dana

The way I was originally taught this was that the sensitivity in flame-aas referred to the concentration of that element that gave a signal of 0.2. The characteristic concentration is the concentration of that element equal to an absorbance of 0.0044 (99% T). As to which one is more important. To me characteristic concentration is more related to the detection limit though others may disagree. When carrying out analyses with flame-aas I always look at the sensitivity on the day verses that expected to get an idea of how the analysis on that day

Kevin

Hi Soccerdad,

Thanks for answer, and how agilent have spesification document about 0.2Abs on each element, mean lower limit allowed and max limit allowed abs from 0.2 abs?

Hi Dana, I wasn’t totally certain what you meant but here goes.. I haven’t come across limits for the sensitivity anywhere though others may have done. I use the values just as a guide as to what the sensitivity should be when I measure it. I was told that the values quoted in the software should be easy to achieve with a functioning unit without too much need for optimization. I think this may be because the values were first determined in the past using older AAS models. Kevin