4. Compound materials

4.1 General

The compound materials discussed in this section are either finished products or ready-to-use formulated products intended for a specific use. Many of them contain both organic and inorganic constituents.

The diversity and complexity of formulated products is such that it is very difficult to establish a precise procedure for their analysis. The most that can be done is to define a standard scheme that the analyst must adapt to each product category, using the most appropriate techniques to identify and measure the constituents of the mixture.

Identification is the most important phase, as it determines the choice of determinations to be carried out for quantitative analysis. It requires the use of separation and identification...