电感耦合等离子体质谱Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

液体样品经雾化器雾化后进入约 6000–10000 K 的氩等离子体，在毫秒内去溶剂、原子化、电离，绝大多数金属元素电离效率超过 90%。离子通过采样锥和截取锥进入高真空，经离子透镜聚焦后由四极杆（或扇形磁场、飞行时间）质量分析器分离，电子倍增器计数。主要干扰包括多原子离子干扰（如 ⁴⁰Ar³⁵Cl⁺ 干扰 ⁷⁵As⁺、⁴⁰Ar¹⁶O⁺ 干扰 ⁵⁶Fe⁺）和同量异位素干扰，常用碰撞/反应池（He、H₂、NH₃）或高分辨质谱消除。

Liquid samples are nebulised into an argon plasma at about 6000–10,000 K, where within milliseconds they are desolvated, atomised and ionised, with ionisation efficiencies above 90% for most metals. Ions pass through sampler and skimmer cones into high vacuum, are focused by ion lenses, separated by a quadrupole (or magnetic sector or time-of-flight) analyser and counted by an electron multiplier. The main interferences are polyatomic ions, such as ⁴⁰Ar³⁵Cl⁺ on ⁷⁵As⁺ and ⁴⁰Ar¹⁶O⁺ on ⁵⁶Fe⁺, and isobaric overlaps, removed with collision/reaction cells (He, H₂, NH₃) or high-resolution MS.

1980 年英国萨里大学的格雷与美国艾姆斯实验室的霍克等人合作，首次报道了 ICP 与四极杆质谱联用。1983 年第一台商品化 ICP-MS 问世。此后多接收器 ICP-MS（MC-ICP-MS）、激光剥蚀进样（LA-ICP-MS）和单颗粒、单细胞 ICP-MS 相继发展。

In 1980 Gray at the University of Surrey and Houk and colleagues at the Ames Laboratory in the United States first reported coupling an ICP to a quadrupole mass spectrometer. The first commercial ICP-MS appeared in 1983, followed by multicollector ICP-MS (MC-ICP-MS), laser-ablation sampling (LA-ICP-MS) and single-particle and single-cell ICP-MS.

ICP-MS 用于饮用水和食品中的超痕量重金属检测、半导体超纯试剂和晶圆杂质分析、稀土元素和铂族元素测定、地质年代学（锆石 U-Pb 定年，LA-ICP-MS）、同位素示踪和核法证、临床血液和尿液微量元素、药品元素杂质（ICH Q3D）、纳米颗粒表征，以及与色谱联用进行元素形态分析（如区分无机砷和有机砷）。

ICP-MS measures ultra-trace heavy metals in drinking water and food, impurities in ultrapure semiconductor reagents and wafers, rare-earth and platinum-group elements, geochronology (zircon U–Pb dating by LA-ICP-MS), isotopic tracing and nuclear forensics, trace elements in blood and urine, elemental impurities in drugs (ICH Q3D), nanoparticles, and, coupled with chromatography, elemental speciation such as inorganic versus organic arsenic.