The atomization of silver in graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry—a Monte Carlo study of physical parameters

Widely varying experimental values for activation energy and pre-exponential factors for silver have been reported in the literature. A model is developed to provide an interpretation of possible interactions of the analyte with the graphite for different experimental conditions in graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS). It is formulated as a Monte Carlo study. By abandoning the concept of fixed parameters, it is shown that the experimental values are close to the theoretically predicted values. Satisfactory correlation with all experimental absorbance profiles is obtained with a very simple formulation for the temporal distribution of the particles using calculated diffusion coefficients.