Analytical challenges in characterization of high purity materials

Available analytical literature reveals that it is possible to identify a lot of procedures to carry out any determination using a plethora of analytical techniques. The fundamental analytical requirements for realizing the desired and acceptable information from a chemical analysis are representative nature of the sample, precision, accuracy, selectivity and sensitivity. These decide, to a larger extent, the selection of the most appropriate methodology in order to obtain chemical information from a system. A number of analytical methodologies are being used in the author’s laboratory for carrying out trace elemental analysis as a part of chemical quality control. Quite a good number of analytical challenges with specific reference to the characterization of high purity materials of relevance to nuclear technology were addressed and methodologies were developed for trace elemental analysis of both metallic and non-metallic constituents. A brief review of these analytical challenges and the analytical methodologies developed and also the future needs of analytical chemist are presented in this paper.