Effect of discharge voltage and current on light emission in glow discharge spectrometry

Dependence of the light emission yields on discharge voltage and current in glow discharge spectrometry (GDS) were discussed. The emission yield varies inversely to voltage and increases linealy with current. This dependence on voltage and current is not affected by the causes to alter the voltage or the current: argon gas pressure or element composition of specimen. The current/voltage dependence of the emission yields implies that the influence of voltage change on the emission yield is larger than that of current change. For this reason, the measurements on the constant voltage mode should be employed for quantitative analysis by GDS. However, correction of emission yields using its voltage dependence reduces the standard deviations of analytical values in the case of the constant current mode.