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Interested in the NEW 10th Edition of the ACS Reagent Chemicals Specifications and Procedures? Click on the book cover for details.
BRAND NEW - AVAILABLE, JUNE, 2008
2nd Edition of "Practical Guide to ICP-MS: A Tutorial for Beginners" Textbook
I cannot believe that it’s been 4 years since I published the first edition of this textbook. What was originally intended as a series of tutorials on the basic principles of ICP-MS for Spectroscopy magazine in 2001 quickly grew into a textbook focusing on the practical side of the technique. With well over a thousand copies of the English version sold and a Chinese (Mandarin) version now in print, I’m very honored that the book has gained the reputation as being the reference book of choice for novices and beginners to the technique. Sales of the book have exceeded my wildest expectations. Of course it helps when it is “recommended reading” for a Short Course I teach twice a year on “How to Select and ICP-MS”. It also helps when you get the visibility of your book being displayed at 15 different vendors’ booths at the Pittsburgh Conference every year. But there is no question in my mind that the major reason for its success is that it presents ICP-MS in a way that is very easy to understand for beginners, and also shows the practical benefits of the technique for carrying out routine trace element analysis.
However, four years is a long time for a textbook to remain current, even if sales of the book in its fourth year were almost as high as they were in its first year in 2004. For that reason, it made sense to not only write an updated version to represent the current state of the technology, but also to incorporate all the great feedback from users and vendors I received over the past few years. But still not loosing sight that it’s target audience was going to be users who had just started to use ICP-MS or analytical chemists who were in the process of thinking about investing in the technique. So with that in mind, I present to you the second edition of “A Practical Guide to ICP-MS: A tutorial for beginners”. Below is a summary of the major changes from the 1st edition.
I have included two brand new chapters on:
· Elemental Speciation: The demand for trace element speciation studies, particularly using liquid chromatography coupled with ICP-MS, has sky-rocketed in the past few years, especially in the environmental, toxicological and clinical fields. This new chapter will attempt to capture the current state of this exciting hyphenated technique, with particular emphasis on the most common applications being carried out and the optimum hardware and software configurations for both the liquid chromatographic separation and ICP-MS detection, to ensure the most successful speciation analysis.
· Glossary of ICP-MS Terms: I regret not putting this chapter in the 1st edition of my book, based on feedback I received. So I knew when I got round to writing the next edition, a basic dictionary or glossary of ICP-MS terms was an absolute necessity. I have therefore put together a list of explanations and definitions of the most common words, expressions and terms used in this book. It is aimed specifically at beginners to use as quick reference guide, without having to go looking for a more detailed explanation of the subject matter somewhere else in the book.
There are also major rewrites and significant additions to the following chapters:
· Collision/Reaction Cell/Interface Technology: Collision and reaction cells and interfaces have revolutionized ICP-MS analysis since their commercialization in 1999. They are allowing determinations that were previously difficult if not impossible to carry out using quadrupole-based instrumentation. However, as more and more applications are getting developed, it is clear that all the different commercial designs on the market approach the analytical determinations differently. This extended chapter on collision/reaction cells will attempt to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each design and how they impact the strategy for developing a method and the analysis of unknown samples.
· Alternative Sample Introduction Techniques: Non-standard sampling accessories like laser ablation systems, flow injection analyzers, electrothermal vaporizers, cooled spray chambers, desolvation equipment, direct injection nebulizers and automated sample delivery systems and dilutors are considered critical to enhance the practical capabilities of the technique. Their use has increased significantly over the past few years as ICP-MS is being asked to solve more and more diverse application problems. This chapter reflects the increased interest in sampling accessories, especially in the area of specialized sample introduction and desolvation devices to reduce the impact of common interferences.
· ICP-MS Applications: As ICP-MS is getting less expensive, it is getting installed in more and more routine labs and as result is being asked to solve more diverse application problems every year. In addition, the power of collision/reaction cell/interface technology is taking the technique into applications areas that previously required high resolution instrumentation to carry out the analysis. This chapter, while still emphasizing the most common routine-type applications, will also give an insight into the emerging new application areas being addressed.
· How to Select an ICP-MS System: The Most Important Analytical Considerations: My experience of teaching two Short Courses a year on this subject has given me a unique insight into the kinds of questions that most novices have when evaluating commercial instrumentation. This chapter will focus on the most important analytical considerations when going through the evaluation process, with particular emphasis on what I have learned from teaching my course over the past four years.
· Comparison of ICP-MS With Other Atomic Spectroscopy Techniques: This chapter has been updated to compare the performance capabilities of modern ICP-MS (with collision/reaction cell/interface capabilities), with the latest ICP-OES, GFAA and FAA instrumentation. In addition, the section on “cost of analysis” has been updated to reflect the price of gases, electricity and instrument consumables in 2007/2008, compared to four years ago.
In addition, I have made minor modifications to many of the other chapters in the book, to reflect the advancement of the technology over the past four years.
The new book will be on display at the CRC Press/Taylor and Francis booth (#5835), as well as at a number of ICP-MS instrumentation, accessories and consumables exhibitors at the 2008, Pittsburgh Conference in New Orleans. It will be available for purchase at the end of June, 2008. To receive a pre-publication 15% discount on the pick click below:
PRE-ORDER AND GET 15% DISCOUNT ON THE BOOK.pdf
For those of you who are not familiar with the 1st edition of the book, details are given below.
1st Edition of "Practical Guide to ICP-MS" Textbook
NOTE: A CHINESE (MANDARIN) VERSION OF THE THE 1st EDITION OF THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE. SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS
To order the English version of the book, click on the book cover (above left) and it will take you to the ordering page on the website of the publisher, Taylor and Francis - CRC Press. If you want to order the Mandarin version, you will have to contact Shuo Lui, the editor of the Chinese Atomic Energy Press based in Bejing. Contact information is given below at
Email: liushuo@nuclear.cetin.net.cn
Phone: (86)-10-68462073.
If you want more information about the contents of the book, please read on. If you want to read a brief synopsis of reviews of the book click here. For the full reviews, scroll down to the end of this page.
What Drove Me to Write This Book?
Twenty years after the commercialization of Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) at the Pittsburgh Conference in 1983, there are approximately 5000 systems installed worldwide. If you compare this number with another rapid multielement technique, Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES), first commercialized in 1974, the difference is quite significant. In 1994, twenty years after ICP-OES was introduced, about 12,000 units had been sold and if you compare it with the same time period that ICP-MS has been available, the difference is even more staggering. From 1983 to the present day, approximately 25,000 ICP-OES systems have been installed – about 5x more than the number of ICP-MS systems. If the comparison is made with all Atomic Spectroscopy instrumentation (ICP-MS, ICP-OES, Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption [GFAA] and Flame Atomic Absorption [FAA]), the annual sales for ICP-MS is less than 7% of the total AS market - 500 units compared to approximately 7000 AS systems. It’s even more surprising when you consider that ICP-MS offers so much more than the other techniques, including superb detection limits, rapid multielement analysis and isotopic measurement capabilities.
ICP-MS - Routine or Research?
Clearly, one of the many reasons that ICP-MS has not become more popular is its relatively high price-tag - an ICP mass spectrometer typically costs 2x more than ICP-OES and 3x more than GFAA. But in a competitive world, the “street price” of an ICP-MS system is much closer to a top-of-the line ICP-OES or a GFAA that has all the “bells and whistles” on it. So if ICP-MS is not significantly more expensive than ICP-OES and GFAA, why hasn’t it been more widely accepted by the analytical community? I firmly believe the major reason, why ICP-MS has not gained the popularity of the other trace element techniques, is that it is still considered a complicated research-type technique, requiring a very skilled person to operate it. Manufacturers of ICP-MS equipment are constantly striving to make the systems easier to operate, the software easier to use and the hardware easier to maintain, but even after twenty years, it is still not perceived as a mature, routine tool like flame AA or ICP-OES. This might be partially true, because of the relative complexity of the instrumentation. However, in my opinion, one of the major reasons for this misconception is that there has not been a good textbook available explaining the basic principles and application benefits of ICP-MS, in a way that is compelling and easy to understand for a novice who has limited knowledge of the technique. There are some excellent textbooks describing the fundamentals, but they are mainly written or edited by academics, who are not approaching the subject from a practical perspective. For this reason, they tend to be far too heavily biased towards theory and less to how ICP-MS is being applied in the real-world.
Practical Benefits
There is no question in my mind that the technique needs to be presented in a more practical way, in order to make routine analytical laboratories more comfortable with it. Unfortunately, the publisher of the “Dummies” series has not yet found a “mass” market for a book on ICP-MS. I am being a little facetious of course, but I firmly believe that a textbook of this kind is sadly lacking from the ICP-MS reference literature available today. This was my main incentive for writing the book. However, I also felt it was important to paint a complete picture for someone who is looking to invest in ICP-MS, by comparing detection capability, sample throughput, dynamic range, interferences, operator skill level and running costs. with other common trace element techniques, like FAA, GFAA and ICP-OES. This will enable the reader to relate the benefits of ICP-MS to other atomic spectroscopy instrumentation he/she is more familiar with. In addition, in order to fully understand its practical capabilities, I also wanted to present an overview of the most common applications currently being carried out by ICP-MS and its sampling accessories - to give an overview of the different industries and markets that are benefiting from the technique’s enormous potential. And finally, having worked for an ICP-MS manufacturer for 20 years, I wanted to discuss the most important selection criteria for those of you who might be interested in purchasing the technique. In my opinion, this is a critical ingredient in presenting ICP-MS to a novice, because there is very little information in the public domain to help someone carry out an evaluation of commercial instrumentation. Very often, people go into this evaluation process completely unprepared and as a result may end up with an instrument that is not ideally suited for their needs.
The main topics presented in this book will include:
· Brief Overview of ICP-MS
· Principles of Ion Formation
· Sample Introduction
· Plasma Generation
· Interface Region
· Ion Focusing
· Mass Separation Devices
· Ion Detection
· Peak Measurement Protocol
· Common Interferences
· Methods of Quantitation
· Contamination Issues/Sample Preparation
· Routine Maintenance
· Alternate Sampling Accessories
· Comparisons With Other AS Techniques
· Common Applications
· Most Important Selection Criteria
So if you share my opinion about the lack of practical ICP-MS reference books, and are interested in purchasing “A Practical Guide to ICP-MS”, please click on the book cover on the left, which will take you to the publisher's website. Clicking on the book cover on the right will give you the email address of the Chinese publisher.
Click here read the full reviews of the book.
Or if you want pre-order the 2nd Edition of the textbook - due out at the end of June, 2008, please click below:
PRE-ORDER AND GET 15% DISCOUNT ON THE BOOK.pdf
Thanks for your interest.
Robert Thomas
Principal Consultant
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