Quantitative Analysis of 34 Impurity Elements in High Purity Scandium Oxide by Direct Current Glow Discharge Mass Spectrometry

High purity scandium oxide is an important rare earth oxide, which has a wide range of applications, and the impurity content has a certain impact on its performance. It is very important to analyze the impurity for content efficiently and accurately. In recent years, glow discharge mass spectrometry (GD-MS) has been effectively utilized for the determination of impurities in high-purity oxides. In this study, 34 impurity elements in high-purity scandium oxide quality-control samples were tested to calibrate the relative sensitivity factors of the instrument. Subsequently, 34 impurity elements in high-purity scandium oxide samples were quantitatively analyzed with the corrected instrument. The optimal experimental conditions are as follows: discharge current is 1.8 mA, Ar gas flow rate is 0.30 mL/min, pre-sputtering time is set to 40 min, sample diameter is 5 mm. According to the best experimental method, 34 impurity elements in high-purity scandium oxide ( purity of 99.99%) were quantitatively analyzed. The results show that when the impurity elements content exceeds 1 μg/g, the relative standard deviation (<italic>RSD</italic>, <italic>n</italic> = 6) is within 5%. When the content of impurity is less than 1 μg/g, <italic>RSD</italic> (<italic>n</italic> = 6) is within 10%. The test results are basically consistent with the detection results of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS). The absolute values of relative errors are all within 30% which meet the testing requirements.