The area of atomic spectrometry has long suffered from inefficient sample preparation and introduction systems. Microwave heating can be a powerful technique for improving these systems but has tending not to be well understood and used in analytical chemistry. The purpose of this work has been to use microwave energy in order to improve sample preparation and introduction for plasma source spectrometry. An objective of this work has been to develop an on-line pressurized microwave digestion system. This system was developed to be capable of digesting difficulty soluble organic materials with nitric acid alone rapidly while reducing possibilities for contamination and providing the possibility for automation. The use of microwave energy has been considered as a technique for desolvating an aqueous aerosol prior to solvent removal using a Nafion dryer. The purpose of this system was to increase the efficiency of sample introduction to a plasma source mass spectrometer. In order to accomplish this some fundamental studies of microwave interaction with water droplets were performed and a theoretical background was developed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-3156 |
| Date | 01 January 1999 |
| Creators | Fitzgerald, Neil |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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