Hydrogen H_β line as an internal standard in inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry

An internal standard element has generally been employed to obtain accurate analytical results in inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). This paper describes the possibility of hydrogen H_β line (486.13 nm) being used as an internal standard line in ICP-OES. For this purpose, the relative intensities of a V II emission line were measured under various conditions when the H_β line as well as the YII 371.03-nm line were employed as the internal standard. The intensity variation of the V II line could be corrected more accurately by using the H_β line rather than the YII line. It should be noted that the intensity of the H _β line is relatively weak and is easily affected by background emissions, which may lead to a large error in the estimation of the H _β line intensity. Nevertheless, the H_β line would be useful to correct for any variations of the sample amount introduced into ICP. The H_β internal standard was applied to the determination of alloyed elements in Cu-In-Sn, Mo-Si-B, and Ge-Cr-Al-Ce-Sn.