The Effect on Sulfur Species during Determination of Sulfur by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry

Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) is often applied to determine sulfur in minerals, proteins, fossil fuels and other materials. The study of sensitivity, limit of detection and background noise during determination of sulfur, using both Quadrupole Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (Q-ICP-MS) and Sector Field Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (SF-ICP-MS), are presented in this paper. One focus of the paper is to study the effect on sulfur species during determination of sulfur in two different matrices (water and 2% HNO3) by SF-ICP-MS. The results indicate that the signals for S2-, S2O32-, SO32-, SO42-, respectively, in 2% HNO3 are consistently more stable than in water matrix. Therefore, the matrix of 2% HNO3 is more suitable for sulfur determination by ICP-MS. In addition, sulfur sensitivities for S2- were higher than those for SO42- and S2O32- by ICP-MS. The sulfur sensitivities of S2- and SO32- were 6 and 4 times higher respectively than those of S2O32- and SO42-. The reason for higher sulfur sensitivities for both S2- and SO32- is that the formation of aerosols (H2S and SO2) in 2% HNO3 improves atomization efficiency.