4. Applications

GDMS has been used for many years in routine analysis in industrial and commercial laboratories, for the qualitative and quantitative determination of minor elements and, above all, traces and ultra-traces in solids and, in particular, ultra-pure materials such as metals, steels, alloys and semiconductors. In this respect, it has been a welcome replacement for Spark Source Mass Spectrometry (SSMS), whose source is much less stable.

The use of RF discharge sources has extended the field of application of GDMS to non-conductive samples (glass, ceramics, soils, etc.), still for volume analysis, but also for depth-resolved analysis (thin films) and isotopic analysis.

In recent years, GDMS has also been used to characterize liquid and gaseous samples, and to analyze organic samples.

This section presents the most common...