Patent ID: 8082111

Claim:
A method for qualitative and quantitative analysis of any type of single- or multi-element sample by optical emission spectroscopy with laser excitation, comprising the steps of: calculating inter-element coefficients between all elements of interest likely to be found together in a sample based on a qualitative analysis by a detection device, an inter-element coefficient corresponding to a ratio between intensities of two lines from two different elements, said inter-element coefficient being represented by the formula, coefficient ( i , j ) ⁡ ( α / β ) = I i ⁡ ( α ) I j ⁡ ( β ) , where I i (α) and I j (β) are the respective intensities of line α in element i and line β in element j obtained from a database generated on single-element aqueous solutions all having the same pure element concentration, the database containing, for each element, the wavelengths of the emission lines and their respective intensities: analyzing the sample by the detection device using an optical emission spectroscopy to determine a plurality of emission lines present and their respective intensities to provide an emission spectrum by exciting the sample using a laser to transform the sample into a plasma; determining the elements present in the sample from the emission spectrum by the detection device; and quantitatively calculating respective concentrations of the elements identified previously during the qualitative analysis using the inter-element coefficients and the intensities of the emission lines detected by applying the following formula: c 1 + ∑ i ⁢ coefficient ( 1 , i ) ⁡ ( α i / β i ) * J i ⁡ ( β i ) J 1 ⁡ ( α i ) * c 1 = 100 , in which c 1 represents mass percentage concentration of an element of the sample chosen as a reference element, and terms of the sum represent the concentrations of other elements identified in the sample expressed as a function of the concentration c 1 , the inter-element coefficients, and the intensities Ji measured by the detection device during the analysis of the sample using the optical emission spectroscopy.