Over the years, the atomic spectroscopy market has witnessed a steady growth along with an increase in its application horizon. The wide applications of atomic spectroscopy are witnessed in various industries such as food and beverage testing, environmental testing, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, industrial chemistry, and mining, among others. X-ray fluorescence, Atomic absorption, X-ray diffraction, inductively coupled plasma, Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry amongst others are the commonly used atomic spectroscopy technologies market.
Technologies such as X-ray fluorescence and atomic absorption currently dominate the atomic spectroscopy market. However, the growing popularity of inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry worldwide as the instrument of choice for performing trace metal analysis is expected to boost the demand for this technology in the coming years. In comparison to the other atomic spectroscopy technologies, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry is slated to grow at the highest CARG for the period 2013-2018.
The largest application areas for inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry technology are pharmaceutical and food and beverage testing. Globally, there has been an increase in attention to reduce the acceptable levels of metals in food and medicines. For instance, the Canadian government passed a new law – Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa’s Law, December 2013), to protect their citizens from unsafe drugs in the market. New requirements such as these have forced the pharmaceutical industry to increasingly turn to inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry technology as its enables the detection of metals in drug samples.
The revision in Chapter 231 of the U.S. Pharmacopeia has a significant impact on the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry technology. This revision requires pharmaceutical companies to use inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry for testing the presence of heavy metals in pharmaceutical materials. This development will single handedly act as the major driver for the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry technology in the coming years.
Some inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers available in the market are Aurora M90 (Bruker Corporation), 8800 Triple Quad ICP-MS (Agilent Technologies), and NexION 300 ICP-MS Spectrometers (PerkinElmer, Inc.).
