A Spectrum in AAS? What Do I Need That For?

A justified question: for half a century, AAS users had to put up with abstract numerical values. How they come about and whether they are actually accurate remains a secret. The High-Resolution Continuum Source (HR-CS) AAS used in the contrAA series from Analytik Jena (Germany) provides the AAS user with significantly more information. Thanks to the combination of a xenon lamp covering the entire relevant wavelength range, a high-resolution spectrometer and a CCD-detector, it has become possible to visually represent the absorption spectra of samples.

This spectrum contains valuable information. It shows, for example, whether the measuring process is interference-free. Thanks to the extremely high optical resolution, spectral interference is very rare. In the event of such an exceptional case, however, spectral representation offers entirely new opportunities for background correction and for the correction of direct spectral interference. Users can now detect any interference at a glance and, if required, correct it using simple methods.