Hi everyone, I work for an environmental analysis company and we are currently trying to assess the REE concentration in various wastes (mainly slag and ashes from waste incineration), I work with an ICP-MS 7800, has anyone tried to optimize the system for such analysis?
I've tried to make an acquire method from scratch, using high integration times, actually 200 sweeps/replica, 5 replica each point, 1 sec integration time in no gas and 2 sec integration in gas as you can see below
Tune was made using the "general purpose" preset as follows
No gas mode:
Helium mode: (actually lowered He flow to 4.5 ml/min to achieve higher counts)
Any suggestion about optimizing the system? Higher or lower integration times, different tune setting and so on?
Also how to determine Sc Y & Tb as analytes when they are also used as ISTD? Is there any "functional" ISTD selection that doesn't contain such analytes? Using just In and Bi as internal standards seems a bit troublesome since In is often found in wastes (so the signal is not reliable as istd) and Bi is too heavy as mass to cover the whole spectrum