Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry with nanosecond time resolution

Abstract

In this proof-of-principle study, we present our contribution to single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS) developments with a novel in-house built data acquisition system with nanosecond time resolution (nanoDAQ) and a matching data processing approach. The new system can continuously sample the secondary electron multiplier (SEM) detector signal and enables the detection of gold nanoparticles (AuNP) as small as 7.5 nm with the commercial single quadrupole ICP-MS instrument used in this study. Recording of the SEM signal by the nanoDAQ is performed with a dwell time of approximately 4 ns. A tailored method was developed to process this type of transient data, which is based on determining the temporal distance between detector events that is denoted as event gap (EG). We found that the inverse logarithm of EG is proportional to the particle size and that the number of detector events corresponding to a particle signal distribution can be used to calibrate and determine the particle number concentration (PNC) of a nanoparticle dispersion. Due to the high data acquisition frequency, a statistically significant number of data points can be obtained in 60 s or less and the main time limitation for analyses is merely the sample uptake time and rinsing step between analyte solutions. At this stage, the data processing method provides average information on complete data sets only and will be adapted to enable particle-by-particle analysis with future hardware/software revision.