Separate vaporisation of boric acid and inorganic boron from tungsten sample cuvette-tungsten boat furnace followed by the detection of boron species by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-MS and ICP-AES).

Utilising extremely different vaporisation properties of boron compounds, the determination procedures of volatile boric acid and total boron using tungsten boat furnace (TBF) ICP-MS and TBF-ICP-AES have been investigated. For the determination of volatile boric acid by TBF-ICP-MS, tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH, Me(4)NOH) was used as a chemical modifier to retain it during drying and ashing stages. As for the total boron, not only non-volatile inorganic boron such as boron nitride (BN), boron carbide (B(4)C), etc. but also boric acid (B(OH)(3)) was decomposed by a furnace-fusion digestion with NaOH to produce sodium salt of boron, a suitable species for the electrothermal vaporisation (ETV) procedure. The proposed method was applied to the analysis of various standard reference materials. The analytical results for various biological and steel samples are described.