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Internal Standards

  • Page ID
    76371
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    What happens if changes in sample viscosity change the rate of sample uptake between standards and unknowns? This violates one of the assumptions behind the use of external standard working curves. What happens if gas flow rates or sample input rates fluctuate? Again, the assumptions behind external standard working curves are violated. One can compensate for such variations by adding an element to a sample that is otherwise absent from the sample, is excited in ways similar to that of analyte elements in the sample, and can be observed simultaneously with emission from the sample. This is an internal standard. The most common internal standards are yttrium and scandium (though, obviously, these elements can not be used for geological samples where such elements may occur!). One assumes linear response. The amount of internal standard is set high enough that background can be ignored. Iis = kis Cis. The working curve is then written as I(λ)/Iis = I0 + k(λ)/kis C/Cis. If sample uptake or uptake variations are the main noise source, internal standard working curves are more precise than external standard curves. Internal standards are common in e.g. steel, aluminum, or brass analysis where the concentration of one element (iron, aluminum, or copper) is effectively constant in every sample or where the important analytical question is the ratio of the analyte to the internal standard.


    This page titled Internal Standards is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Alexander Scheeline & Thomas M. Spudich via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.