Open Access

E. L. Gurevich, R. Hergenröder

• In this paper a novel concept of ablation cell for laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is presented. Suppression of the turbulence in the flush gas flow in the ablation region reduces the wash-out time of the ablation cell considerably. An ablation chamber which enables ICP-MS pulse duration down to several ten milliseconds has been designed. Dependence of the ICP-MS peak amplitude, width, and shape on the gas flow parameters is studied experimentally for aerosol ablated under laminar and turbulent conditions. Experiments demonstrate that the ICP-MS peak becomes sharper and the amplitude of the signal grows as the turbulence in the ablation cell is suppressed. Furthermore, the possibility of the LA-ICP-MS analysis with a sampling rate of more than 10 Hz has been demonstrated. Express in-depth profiling in the new ablation cell is demonstrated on examples of an Al -Zn multilayer structure and an industrial Mg -Zn coating.