FIA joins the sophisticates

The introduction of flow-injection analysis (FIA) represented an important breakthrough in automated chemical analysis. FIA is based on the injection of a liquid sample via a valve or syringe into a moving, non-segmented continuous carrier stream of suitable liquid. The injected sample forms a zone or slug that is transported by the carrier stream towards a detector, which continuously measures the changing aborbance, electrical potential, or other physical parameter as the sample zone passes through the detector flow cell. After being injected, the sample solution may be delivered direct to the detector or dispersed in the carrier stream to facilitate conditioning of the sample prior to measurement. The dispersion of the injected sample in the carrier stream is induced by the flow process alone and does not require any mechanical assistance. FIA has been applied with increasing frequency to the analysis of a wide range of samples in scientific and industrial fields such as the direct determination of uranium(VI)