Features of Boron-Containing Glasses Chemical Composition Determination by the LA-Q-ICP-MS Analysis

This paper presents the method and features of determining the chemical composition of boron-containing glass by the method of quadrupole mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma and laser ablation (LA-Q-ICP-MS). A number of glasses of systems Na2O–B2O3–GeO2–SiO2 and Na2O–B2O3–GeO2 with the boron content ranging from 2.2 to 16.1 wt % are studied. The analysis used the international standard NIST SRM-610 and SRM-612 samples, as well as natural crystals of danburite and datolite as the control reference samples. A correlation is established when comparing the results of the content of sodium, boron, germanium, and silicon in glassy samples with the data of X-ray spectral microanalysis (electron probe macro analyzer (EPMA). It is shown that the optimal conditions for determining the chemical composition by the LA-Q-ICP-MS method are when the maximum laser beam size does not exceed 40 μm, the ablation energy is above 20–22 J/cm2, and natural borosilicate crystals are used as the external standard for boron. The regularities of boron losses during the synthesis of glasses by the standard method of melt quenching are determined, which for the studied systems vary from 13.5 to 32 rel. %.