Direct analysis of solid cadmium mercury telluride by flameless atomic absorption using interactive computer processing

This paper describes a solid sampling technique for the quantitative measurement of impurities in cadmium mercury telluride (CMT) in the ppb region. It has been used to calibrate the spark source mass spectrograph (A.E.I. MS7) analysis of this material. Typical detection limits obtained are: 0.0002 ppmw Ag, 0.002 ppmw Cu, 0.001 ppmw Fe, 0.0002 ppmw Mn, 0.002 ppmw Cr, 0.004 ppmw Al, 0.0001 ppmw Na, 0.000 06 ppmw Mg, 0.01 ppmw Si. The solid sample is directly analysed by flameless atomic absorption and the method is shown to give results precise to about 10%. Aqueous standards are used throughout and area measurements are found to be considerably better than peak-height calibration curves for this material. The data collection, calculation and display use a shared computer system developed at these laboratories.