ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on quadrupole technology, the fundamental principles of measurement protocol will be very similar for all types of mass spectrometers that use a sequential approach for multielement peak quantitation. Now that the fundamentals of the quadrupole measuring electronics have been described on the impact of optimizing the measurement protocol based on the requirements of the application. They need to know if we are dealing with a continuous signal from a nebulizer or a transient signal from a sampling accessory such as the laser ablation system of a chromatographic separation device. However, to understand what is realistically achievable, they have to be aware of the practical limitations of measuring a signal and counting ions in inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (ICP-MS). The ICP-MS has shown that it has the unique capability to carry out rapid trace element analysis, with superb detection limits and good precision on both continuous and transient signals.
