Zinc-based reference materials for glow discharge optical emission spectrometry: sputter factors and emission yields

A set of new ZnAl reference materials (RMs) is described, intending to support the depth profile analysis of zinc-based coatings by GD-OES. The RMs were subject to a two-stage certification procedure: first, they were analyzed for their composition by methods other than GD-OES, mostly by wet chemical methods. In the second step, sputter factors of these RMs were determined, based on the GD-OES measurements. For this purpose, the standard model of matrix-independent emission yields was used to relate the GD-OES intensities of selected elements to the compositions of the RMs, found from the first stage of the certification procedure. In the data, evidence was found that the model of matrix-independent emission yields is violated for the matrices involved.