How to Perform Like a PRO Lesson 1: Be Faster than Ever Before

Speed is essential to be competitive in a variety of disciplines. For many of them, the best performance is only achieved using the right gear. Could you imagine entering a bike race on a city bike? Or competing in a marathon wearing high heels?

Speed is also essential for trace elemental analysis. Argon is the main contribution to the running cost of an Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) so that reducing the time required for analysis is an effective opportunity to realize savings of up to a few thousand dollars per year. Let’s assume you could accelerate your method to run in 30% less time as compared to now. This would mean that you can increase the throughput of your laboratory from, for example, 300 samples a day to 400. It could, of course, also mean you get to leave the lab to train for your next competition two hours earlier, with the all work done!

ICP-OES typically uses two ways of observing the light emitted from the plasma, along the axis of the plasma (so-called axial view) and perpendicular to it (so-called radial view). As in the latter mode, only a small fraction of the light is captured, it is typically slightly less sensitive, but also less prone to spectral interferences, caused by samples such as wastewaters, brines, or oils, for example. At the same time, elements emit light in different regions of the spectrum. For the purpose of ICP-OES analysis, these are typically the UV or visible regions of the spectrum. As a general rule, as you move from group one across the periodic table the emission move from visible to UV. In most ICP-OES applications, up to four individual exposures are required for visible and UV range in axial and radial mode respectively.

There are good reasons for dedicated exposure of the chip in axial and radial mode (higher sensitivity and improved robustness for all elements), a truly simultaneous observation in UV and visible range can enable a significant reduction of the analysis time per sample. This is essentially what the Thermo Scientific^TM iCAP^TM PRO Series ICP-OES was designed to accomplish, using its entirely new optical system, new electronics, and the new large Charge Injection Device (CID) detection chip. The system allows to not only capture the full wavelength range (between 167.021 and 852.145 nm) in a single exposure, the new CID detector also allows for a significantly faster readout of down to one second per reading. At the same time, the optimum exposure time (meaning the time required to get the lowest noise and therefore the best detection limit) has also been reduced considerably due to high light throughput. The typical time saving per analysis can, therefore, be up to 30%, for example, in a routine laboratory performing the analysis of lubricating oils or a busy lab running soil extracts in high throughput. In addition, the newly designed polychromator also allows for a more efficient purge and therefore allowing for a much faster start-up in comparison to other ICP-OES systems. With the iCAP PRO ICP-OES, you’ll be up and running in only five minutes, not only helping you to realize additional cost savings but also giving you a head start for those urgent samples coming in at short notice.

All this technology is inside the box, but the result is that you can be the first to cross the finish line!

Using the new iCAP PRO ICP-OES, a new level of performance, speed and robustness are right at your hands.