Impurity Elements Determination in High Purity Gold by Using LA-ICP-MS

Abstract The various impurities in high purity gold directly affect the quality and value of gold, and which concentration is usually ultra-low. The laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is a quasi-non-destructive multi-elemental analytical method with low detection limits, high sensitivity and specificity. In this study, we introduce this method to detect impurity elements of 99.999% high purity gold through optimizing the parameters of laser energy density, repetition rate, and crater diameter. The concentration of 20 impurities were determined based on standard curve method, independently verified by glow discharge mass spectrometry (GD-MS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The result shows the quantitative method was successfully used to the determination of impurity elements in high purity gold with the benefits of quasi-non-destruction, simplicity, real-time and green.