Application of triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for characterization of metal oxide nanoparticles

Significant research effort is done to develop suitable analytical techniques to characterize engineered nanoparticles in various environments mainly in terms of particle composition, particle size and particle number. Predominantly metal oxide nanoparticles are of high interest because of their large production volumes. Single particle ICPMS already showed a great potential for detection of nanoparticles composed of interference free elements such as Au and Ag, delivering low size detection limits (< 20nm) and good accuracy. However the same straightforward scenario is not applicable for metal oxide nanoparticles such as Fe2O3 or CuO whose abundant masses are heavily interfered and their determination on quadrupole instruments has been always challenging resulting in high detection limits; which translates into high detection size limits (>100nm). In this contribution the use of triple quadrupole ICPMS for nanoparticle characterization is evaluated in terms of particle size detection limit and number concentration detection limit for iron and copper based nanoparticles.