Abstract
In this review, a full discussion and update of the state-of-the-art of separation techniques interfaced to plasma spectrometers for speciation analysis of non-metallic elements, such as iodine, chlorine, bromine and fluorine as well as phosphorus and sulfur is presented. The plasma-based techniques covered include inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) microwave-induced plasma optical emission spectrometry (MIP-OES), and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). Also, different variants of plasma sources, such as low power plasmas and glow discharge (GD) sources are described and compared with respect to their capabilities in elemental speciation. Recent advances and alternative mass analyzers (collision/reaction cell; time-of-flight; double-focusing sector field) are also included. The discussion is centralized on the application of the hyphenated methodologies involving several types of separations such as liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and electrophoresis coupled to plasma-based detectors for speciation analysis of non-metals. This is presented in different sections considering the analysis of several matrices including environmental, biological and food samples, as well as a last section related to the use of halogenated compounds for plasma studies.
Keywords: Review, Chromatography, Plasma spectrometry, ICP, MIP, Glow discharge, Speciation
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