TRACING ELEMENTS WITH PRECISION: A REVIEW OF INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY (ICP-MS)

Abstract

Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) has established itself as a preeminent technique in analytical science, providing powerful capabilities for trace element and isotope analysis due to its outstanding sensitivity, accuracy, and multi-element detection. This review offers a comprehensive overview of ICP-MS, covering its fundamental principles and instrumentation. The technique functions by ionizing samples in an argon plasma and separating ions according to their mass-to-charge ratios, achieving detection limits at the parts-per-trillion level. ICP-MS finds applications across diverse areas, including environmental monitoring, food authentication, pharmaceutical and drug testing, forensic investigations, and biomedical research on toxic elements and metal bioaccumulation. Its capacity for isotopic ratio determination and species-specific analysis provides valuable insights into contamination pathways, metabolic mechanisms, material provenance, and cellular heterogeneity. By combining high sensitivity with precision and versatility, ICP-MS continues to advance modern analytical science, enabling comprehensive, high-throughput elemental and isotopic characterization across environmental, industrial, biomedical and life science domains.