Agilent 8900 "triple-quadrupole" ICP-MS/MS
Tandem MS/MS with gas collision reaction cell for a range of solution and in-situ laser ablation applications
About
Analyses of samples that are heavily impacted by interferences might require a gas collision reaction cell to be analysed. One example is in Rb/Sr radiometric dating, wherein 87Sr is interfered upon by 87Rb. Usually, to resolve such interferences one would undertake a liquid sample preparation regime to eliminate the Rb from the sample, and subsequently carry out bulk solution analysis. These difficult analyses can be performed in-situ on the Agilent 8900 QqQ-ICP-MS, and using laser ablation sample introduction one can preserve the spatial information when analysing the Rb/Sr isotopic ratio. This is enabled by the tandem mass analysers (Q1 & Q3) employed by the 8900. Here, one mass can be selected with Q1, which is then passed through to the collision-reaction cell (Q2) where a preselected ultra-high purity gas is introduced at low flow to selectively react with the analytes from Q1, and following this the second mass analyser (Q3) can then select for the reactants or products of the Q2 reaction.
In solution mode and using the low flow nebuliser, tricky, low volume samples can be measured for elements and isotope ratios that are typically not able to be analysed by traditional Q-ICP-MS. This machine is capable to achieve 11 orders of dynamic range, permitting the measurement of trace and bulk analytes alike. This allows for extreme performance at millisecond timescales for samples that contain very high and very low concentrations in the same sample. With the attached auto sampler, tens to hundreds of samples can be analysed per day.