Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Tools of the Trade
  • Published:

Characterizing complex solutions with inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry

Nature Reviews Clean Technology volume 1, page 754 (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

As economies shift towards renewable energy and circularity, rising demand for critical minerals such as copper, gallium and the rare earth elements makes elemental analysis — a tool that quantifies metals and impurities in feedstocks — essential to valuation, flowsheet design and environmental monitoring in mining and refining operations. However, conventional techniques such as gravimetry, colorimetry and spectroscopy are often inadequate when (ultra)trace sensitivity or multielement detection are required. These limitations create a gap for tools that provide rapid, precise and versatile elemental analysis, particularly for toxic elements at trace levels.

Advancements in ICP-OES hardware and software have enhanced its resolution to the picometre scale and minimized spectral interferences from other analytes or solvent (matrix) backgrounds. This tool can simultaneously analyse up to 70 elements in complex solutions, including dilute slurries, across concentrations ranging from parts per billion to parts per million. While inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) offers greater sensitivity and inductively coupled plasma-atomic absorption spectrophotometry (ICP-AAS) lowers costs for simpler applications, ICP-OES has an unmatched balance of speed, precision and versatility.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant no. 2023355826. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Daniel A. Dailey

Authors
  1. Daniel A. Dailey
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel A. Dailey.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dailey, D.A. Characterizing complex solutions with inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 754 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-025-00104-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-025-00104-7

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma.

Get what matters in translational research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Translational Research