Techniques for the direct analysis of powdered advanced ceramics provide an advantageous
alternative to methods using wet digestion in sample preparation. The direct spectrochemical
methods based on electrothermal vaporization (ETV-ICP-OES, solid-ETV-AAS, etc.) show
a great similarity to the classical method of d. c. are excitation. The calibration
procedure is the major difficulty of all techniques applied for direct solid sample
analysis, as there is a lack of suitable reference materials of ceramics. Consequently,
it was necessary to verify various possibilities of preparation and application of
model calibration samples. The results of such a calibration are compared with those
using within-laboratory standards.
