SRC Microwave Digestion and How it is Revolutionizing Elemental Analysis

Trace metal analysis is performed for food samples to ensure compliance with legal requirements and regulations and is a critical step in consumer safety testing. The determination of analyte concentrations in food matrices is not an easy task and several factors should be considered to minimize the uncertainty in sample preparation and to achieve the required detection limits. SRC technology offers a new way of digesting food samples, minimizing blanks and providing an interference-free solution for analysis. Simplified operation and reduced operator time ensure increased productivity without compromising digestion quality. In addition, SRC fits perfectly into the unique total sample preparation workflow, which is designed to address the challenges along the path from sample to analysis.

Today, advanced materials are widely used in many areas such as energy and industrial production; their use in new types of batteries is a perfect example. The elemental composition of these materials is critical as it defines their properties, quality, and performance. These materials are often designed to be durable and resist chemical attack. Achieving complete digestion is therefore complex and requires extreme digestion conditions. Traditional digestion approaches are often limited in terms of maximum temperature, pressure, and time. SRC technology opens a new way of dealing with difficult-to-digest samples, making it possible to achieve higher temperatures and pressures, maintain them reliably over a longer time, and reduce the stress on the digestion vessels, thereby increasing their lifetime and lowering analysis costs.

Elemental characterization of geological and mining materials can be a particularly challenging application. These sample matrices by their nature tend to require complex mixtures of acid chemistries to digest completely, and a digestion platform capable of withstanding the temperatures, pressures, and reagents used to process these samples. Typical samples commonly analyzed include rocks, ores, zircons, or other complex inorganic matrices. The latest-generation SRC technology takes advantage of special chemically resistant materials that allow the use of complex acid mixtures without fear of corrosion or contamination that can affect analytical results. It also provides higher temperature and pressure capabilities critical for hard-to-digest samples and accommodates higher sample masses, allowing for lower detection limits to be achieved.

The testing of consumer goods is essential to ensure consumer safety, product quality, and compliance with local and international regulations. Elemental analysis of consumer products involves a wide range of samples, from cosmetics to toys, requiring a flexible digestion system. In addition, the organic nature of these samples leads to high reactivity and generates high pressures during the digestion process that need to be managed by the system. SRC technology is a great ally in the digestion of consumer products as it allows the simultaneous digestion of different matrices and, thanks to its ability to handle high pressures and achieve the required digestion conditions, it can manage even very reactive samples.