About the book
Due to a fast growth of computer and microchip technology, analytical instrumentation in spectroscopy, chromatography, microscopy, sensors and microdevices has been subjected to significant developments over the last two decades. Powerful detectors, software and solid state microchips enabled analytical chemists to achieve fast, stable and accurate signals/outputs from these compact devices. However, despite these advances, a sample preparation step is still indispensable before instrumental analysis. Main reasons are low sensitivity of the instruments, matrix interferences and incompatibility of the sample with the analytical device. On the other hand, most time in any analysis is spent on the sample preparation process. It has been also proved that most of the errors during a chemical analysis are occuring during the sample preparation step. As a result, any improvements in this essential step will have a significant effect on shortening the analysis time as well as its precision and accuracy and also lowering the price of the analysis. Automation, on-line compatibility and simplification of the sample preparation and its ability to handle tiny volumes of the sample is an obligatory part of modern sample preparation techniques for contemporary analytical chemists.
This book intends to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art modern sample preparation techniques. After a review of fundamentals and theoretical principles about sampling/sample preparation/extraction, a review on traditional methods will be presented, followed by aspects which have been less emphasized by of the authors of the similar books on sample preparation techniques, such as instrumentation aspects of sampling and integration with analytical techniques and sample preparation techniques for solid surfaces characterization. At the end, applications of modern extraction techniques in various fields and for different samples will be discussed in detail.
