Investigation on Matrix Effects in Silicate Minerals by Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry

Elimination of the matrix effect between reference materials and analytical targets is very important for the accuracy of analytical results in LA-ICP-MS analysis. And the elemental relative sensitivity factor (RSF) is an important characterization for the evaluation of matrix effect. The RSFs of 49 common elements in 17 silicate glass reference materials and 10 major and minor elements in 10 natural silicate mineral reference materials of EPMA were studied. In this study, to compensate for matrix effect, different internal standard elements (Ca, Al and Si) were compared and the influences of element fractionation effect on the RSFs were discussed. The results indicated that the differences in matrix effect for both glass reference materials and silicate minerals were insignificant. The RSDs of RSFs of 10 major and minor elements in 17 glass reference materials and 10 mineral reference materials were less than 8%. In particular, the differences in matrix effect between glass reference materials and natural geological matrix and silicate minerals were smaller. Ca is an ideal internal standard for analyzing silicate mineral samples. Compared with Ca and Al, Si is not an ideal internal standard because of slight fractionation behaviour. The fractionation behaviour of the same element in glass reference materials and in silicate minerals was similar. Twenty-seven elements in forsterite were analyzed by external calibration in conjunction with internal standardization. The results showed that relative errors of all major elements were nearly less than 4%, and satisfactory results were obtained for minor and trace elements.