Bench Boost by Inorganic Ventures

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In part two of our PURE Laboratories collab Mike continues his conversation with Erik Miller and Dave Neville from Pure Laboratories, exploring what it takes to produce five-nine and six-nine purity materials. Learn about contamination control, sample preparation, ICP quality control, laboratory design, and the small details that make a big difference in ultra-trace elemental analysis.

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In this special episode of Bench Boost, the Inorganic Ventures podcast, host Mike Booth sits down with Erik Miller and Will Marble from Pure Laboratories to discuss the growing demand for ultra-high purity materials. They explore challenges surrounding raw material quality, rare earth supply, custom synthesis, and how material purity impacts advanced industries including semiconductors, energy storage, and aerospace.

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This week on Bench Boost Mike explains why sample container choice can significantly impact elemental analysis results through contamination, adsorption, precipitation, chemical attack, or evaporation. The differences in glass vs common plastics are reviewed in detail, and the episode concludes with a brief discussion on proper cleaning/leaching, and the practice using dedicated containers for ultra-trace work.

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This week on Bench Boost Mike explains two key ICP-OES/ICP-MS quality control samples: the Initial Calibration Verification (ICV) and Continuing Calibration Verification (CCV). The ICV is run after calibration and before samples to confirm the calibration worked. The CCV is run periodically during the batch to confirm the calibration remains valid as drift, clogging, cone buildup, washout, or other issues occur. This episode concludes with reviewing how to troubleshoot ICV or CCV failures.

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This week Mike discusses elevated backgrounds in ICP-OES when analyzing high total dissolved solids (TDS) samples such as brines, digests, excipients, salts, and starting materials. TDS increases free electron density in the plasma, producing Bremsstrahlung (braking) radiation and recombination radiation, which raise a broad continuum background across the spectrum. The elevated background degrades signal-to-noise, increases blank standard deviation, and worsens detection limits, especially for elements with poor ICP-OES sensitivity. Mitigation approaches include dilution, matrix-matched calibration or standard additions when dilution isn’t feasible.