Peculiarities of carbothermal reduction of thulium oxide in graphite furnaces for atomic absorption spectrometry

The nature of absorption signal spikes in the process of thulium oxide evaporation during AAS analysis, is studied. It has been shown that the distance between absorption signal spikes decreases with temperature during carbothermal reduction of Tm2O3. The spike width decreases with sample temperature due to higher rate of carbothermal reduction process. The carbothermal reduction of large particle of thulium oxide results in the formation of continuous spikes