ABSTRACT
Understanding the basic principles of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is important but not absolutely essential to operate and use an instrument on a routine basis. When sample preparation and dilution factors are taken into consideration, ICP-MS is probably going to be the most suitable technique for carrying out the determination of elemental impurities in the majority of drug compounds and raw materials, because of its extremely low detection capability. Analytical performance can mean different things to different people. Detection capability is a term used to assess the overall detection performance of an ICP mass spectrometer. There are a number of different ways of looking at detection capability, including instrument detection limit, elemental sensitivity, background signal, and background equivalent concentration. It is recognized that the major source of drift and imprecision in ICP-MS, particularly with real-world samples, is associated with either the sample introduction area, design of the interface, or ion optics system.
