A collicion of particles may result in removal of a significant ICP-MS interference or may induce unwanted interferences: undesirable species can now be prevented from being detected
The X Series ICP-MS allows the introduction of different gases into a collision cell, which influences both the removal of interferences and production of different species.
For the removal of simple argide species the introduction of a He/H2 mixture may be adequate to allow the analysis of Cr, Cu, and As without ArC, ArNa and ArCl interferences.
For those species which are tightly bound, such as refractory oxides, the Thermo Elemental CCT, second generation collision cell, incorporates an energy discrimination feature which allows selective optimisation of the ions which reach the detector by suppressing the unwanted polyatomics.
The physically larger species have higher collisional cross sections making them susceptible to a higher frequency of collisions.
This in turn results in a lower kinetic energy for those species and enables them to be discriminated against using an energy barrier.
In addition, collision cell reaction product ions which could appear as interferences usually do not have the same energy as those ions direct from the plasma, so their transmission can also be suppressed relative to the ions of analytical interest.
The CCT design has been tailored to allow easy control of collision gases and effective optimisation of the energy filter to provide improved detection limits.
The selectivity of the X Series ICP-MS CCT significantly reduces the effect of both plasma and collision cell formed interferences, approaching interference free analysis in even complex matrices.
