Analytical glow discharge mass spectrometry: Physical aspects and applications

In the last two decades, glow discharge devices have gained increasing interest in analytical spectrometry because of their ability to act as a source of atomization, excitation and ionization for solid samples. In mass spectrometry, the recent development of double focusing and quadrupole instruments provides an alternative to more established mass spectrometric techniques for a variety of applications. This work centers around glow discharge mass spectrometry (GDMS) and can in general be divided in two parts.; In a first part the fundamental aspects of the atomization of sample material in a glow discharge is treated. Through the development of a mathematical model information concerning the sputter process and the distribution of atomized sample material in a glow discharge could be obtained. Two experiments were performed to verify the theoretical calculations. The agreement between calculated and measured etching rates of a molybdenum sample was satisfactory and the experimental investigation of the energy distribution of ions hitting the sample surface showed similar gas ion energy distributions as the ones theoretically expected.; Three applications of GDMS are described in this work. It was investigated whether GDMS offers an alternative to the existing instrumental methods for the analysis of platinum powder and for the determination of precious metals in copper. As a last application, a feasibility test on the capabilities of GDMS for the depth profiling of coated cylindrical samples was performed.