uFREASI: user-FRiendly Elemental dAta procesSIng. A free and easy-to-use tool for elemental data treatment

Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) allows the quantification of trace and ultra-trace elements (mg/kg to pg/kg) by separating elements as a function of their mass-to-charge ratios (m/z) after ionisation into an argon plasma. In spite of being rigorous and accurate, the “Results” modules provided by many manufacturers are often uneasy to use and operators have little control on the calculation. Moreover, the large amount of raw data generated makes the manual treatment very long and not reliable using a “home-made” spreadsheet. The user-FRiendly Elemental dAta procesSIng (uFREASI) software presented in this paper follows a configurable step-by-step procedure allowing a quick and reliable data treatment plus an automatic uncertainty propagation. The concentration calculation is performed using the ordinary least square method after an external calibration. The software proposes many options to correct and to monitor the signal, to warrant both quality and understanding of data treatment. uFREASI is supported by Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems, is open and extensible, and is freely downloadable at http://www.ipgp.fr/~tharaud/uFREASI.