Development of a miniaturized hydride generation-dielectric barrier discharge atomic absorption spectrometer

A miniaturized atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS) was proposed with a planar dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) microplasma as an atomizer, a charge coupled device (CCD) spectrometer as a spectral detector, and a hydride generation (HG) unit as a sampler, and the potential analytical capability was evaluated through the determination of cadmium. Auxiliary hydrogen was added to enhance the atomic absorption signals and the potential mechanism of enhancement effect was studied by use of various techniques. The HG-DBD-AAS was further applied to the determination of Cd, yielding a 1.7-fold enhancement in AAS response with added hydrogen and a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.3 μg L−1 under optimized conditions. Good agreement with the certified values, and desirable spike recoveries ranging between 98% and 108%, were obtained for two certified reference materials and several real water samples, respectively. It can be useful in field analysis of many trace elements with high detectability.