Compositional characterisation of rare earth magnet materials by glow discharge quadrupole mass spectrometry

In this paper, glow discharge quadrupole mass spectrometric (GD-QMS) studies on Sm-Pr-Co compound magnetic materials are reported. The composition of these magnetic materials produced from different manufacturing routes (imported, indigenous) was determined. The results are compared with the results obtained by an alternative analytic technique, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), after complete dissolution of the material in the appropriate acids. For perfectly homogeneous material both the wet chemical method and direct solid analysis method should give the same result. A close examination of both the results indicates that for imported materials the values obtained by wet chemical method and direct solid method are in close agreement. This indicates that the imported (solid) material is highly homogeneous. For indigenous materials, it shows a large difference in the values of Co and Sm. This reveals that the solid material prepared is not as homogenous as the imported materials