Clinical Chemistry, Vol 19, 807-812, Copyright © 1973 by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry

Application of Inductively-Coupled Plasma Excitation Sources to the Determination of Trace Metals in Microliter Volumes of Biological Fluids

¹ Ames Laboratory-USAEC and the Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50010.

The inductively coupled plasma is a promising excitation source for the simultaneous multielement determination of trace (nanogram per milliliter) elements in biological fluids. As little as 25 µl of sample fluid (whole blood, serum, or plasma) has been used, with essentially no sample preparation. This technique offers significant advantages over other methods requiring considerable sample handling that may greatly increase the danger of contamination or loss of trace constituents. The precision of the method is typically ±3 to 5%. Because this is an emission spectroscopic technique, a multichannel direct-reading spectrometer allows simultaneous multielement analyses to be made on microliter samples.

Submitted on March 23, 1973
Accepted on May 28, 1973