• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2010

It is of importance that all countries in worldwide, including EU and China, have adopted the Restrictions on the use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) for all electronics. IEC62321 document, which was published by the International Electronics Committee (IEC) can have conflicts with the standards in the market. On the contrary Publicly Accessible Specification (PAS) for sampling published by IEC TC111 can be adopted for complementary application. In this work, we tried to find a route to disassemble and disjoint cellular phone sample, based on PAS and compare the screening methods available in the market. For this work, the cellular phone produced in 2001, before the regulation was born, was chosen for better detection. Although X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) showed excellent performance for screening, fast and easy handling, it can give information on the surface, not the bulk, and have some limitations due to significant matrix interference and lack of variety of standards for quantification. It means that screening with XRF sometimes requires supplementary tool. There are several techniques available in the market of analytical instruments. Laser ablation (LA) ICP-MS, energy dispersive (ED) XRF and scanning electron microscope (SEM)-energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) were demonstrated for screening a cellular phone. For quantitative determination, graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS) was employed. Experimental results for Pb in a battery showed large difference in analytical results in between XRF and GF-AAS, i.e., 0.92% and 5.67%, respectively. In addition, the standard deviation of XRF was extremely large in the range of 23-168%, compared with that in the range of 1.9-92.3% for LA-ICP-MS. In conclusion, GF-AAS was required for quantitative analysis although EDX was used for screening. In this work, it was proved that LA-ICP-MS can be used as a screening method for fast analysis to determine hazardous elements in electrical products.