Chemical modification for inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometric determination of boron with tungsten boat furnace vaporizer

For electrothermal sample introduction, a commercially available tungsten boat atomizer for atomic absorption spectrometry was transformed into a vaporizer for inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry. By placing a small amount of sodium hydroxide–diammonium hydrogenphosphate solution in the boat as chemical modifier prior to analysis, the loss of boron which would occur during the drying and ashing stages was suppressed. With this method, an enhancement in boron sensitivity and no interference from foreign ions were observed. The detection limit (3σ) was 0.1 ng ml–1 of boron. The relative standard deviation for ten replicate determinations was 2.8% for 5 ng ml–1 of boron. The calibration graph was linear in the tested range of up to 1 µg ml–1 of boron. Analytical results for some steel alloy samples are presented.