Performance assessment of a fully 3D-printed, plastic concentric nebulizer meant for short-term ICP-MS trace analytical use

Abstract

We have designed and successfully fabricated a fully 3D-printed concentric nebulizer made of an acrylicate-based resin using material jetting technology. Computer tomography images confirmed that the details of the nebulizer design were fairly well preserved during the printing. The aerosol quality and the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analytical performance of the nebulizer were investigated in detail and compared to that of a borosilicate glass MicroMist nebulizer. It was found that the aerosol quality and production efficiency was similar to that of the glass nebulizer in the most important particle size range below ca. 7 μm. The chemical resistance and purity of the resin was tested by leaching experiments and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy measurements and it was found to only give rise to some very low level contamination from alkali elements, thus it is suitable for trace analytical ICP-MS use. The 3D-printed plastic and the glass nebulizer gave a comparable performance in terms of background signal intensites, limit of detection and background equivalent concentration values. After 50 h of net service time with acidified aqueous solutions, the 3D-printed nebulizer's performance was re-assessed and only a minor deterioration was found, which indicates that there are no serious issues with aging or erosion, at least during short-term use. Our results therefore suggest that 3D-printing technology is now capable of producing useful sample introduction devices for ICP-MS use.