Impact of and correction for instrument sensitivity drift on nanoparticle size measurements by single-particle ICP-MS

The effect of ICP-MS instrument sensitivity drift on the accuracy of nanoparticle (NP) size measurements using single particle (sp)ICP-MS is investigated. Theoretical modeling and experimental measurements of the impact of instrument sensitivity drift are in agreement and indicate that drift can impact the measured size of spherical NPs by up to 25 %. Given this substantial bias in the measured size, a method was developed using an internal standard to correct for the impact of drift and was shown to accurately correct for a decrease in instrument sensitivity of up to 50 % for 30 and 60 nm gold nanoparticles.