ICP-AES Determination of Precious Metals in Difficult Materials

Abstract

Precious metals occur both during mineral treatment and in many of their industrial applications at low concentrations in a wide variety of complex matrices. Their accurate determination is of considerable economic and technical significance. Plasma emission spectrometry is now the most widely used technique for this type of analysis due to its advantages of speed and relative freedom from interferences. However, in many cases there are still significant effects from the matrix constituents and for accurate analysis the alternatives are to separate the precious metals prior to measurement or to compensate for matrix effects by a combination of matched standards and/or internal standards and/or mathematical correction. This presentation is concerned primarily with the value and limitations in the use of internal standards in this field.