In the case of solutions, these are normaly aspirated into the argon gas stream using a nebuliser. This nebulised solution then passes into a water-cooled spray chamber where some desolvation takes place. The partially desolvated sample passes into the plasma where full desolvation followed by atomisation and ionisation takes place. The ions are removed from the plasma into the first stage of the mass spectrometer via a pumped extraction system. The ionbeam produced by this sampling is then focused into the mass spectrometer.
Detection is by electron multiplier coupled to multichannel analyser.
Dry laser generated samples are handled in the same way except that the aerosol passes directly into the plasma without passing through the spray chamber or nebuliser. An extended dynamic range is available with these instruments wherein elements can be analysed over a concentration range of over ten orders of magnitude. The mass analyser most often used in ICP-MS is the quadrupole mass filter. Quadrupole mass spectrometers are compact and easy to use with an ICP ion source but their relatively low resolution is insufficient to separate different ions at the same mass to charge ratio. Polyatomic ions can overlap with analyte ions causing severe interferences in some cases.