The range of plasma spectroscopy tends to increase with the introduction of more efficient plasma excitation sources. In this thesis the use of one such plasma excitation source, the microwave induced plasma is evaluated as an atom cell for atomic spectrometry. The modes of spectrometry evaluated are atomic emission and atomic fluoresence.

Analytical merits of the microwave induced plasma using detection limits and studies of interelement effects (i.e. vaporization, ionizationâ and scatter interferences) are also presented.