Abstract: Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICPAES) was used to determine the main elements and trace ele ments in sphalerite. Via the investigation of background, matrix element and the chemical element interferences, and adopting the matrix element matching, the interference coefficient correction and the method of inner standard of chemical elements, the instrument work conditions were optimized, the best comprehensive experiment conditions to chemically processing sphalerite samples with HCl-HNO₃ were established. The method of determining cadmium, cobalt, copper, iron, indium, manganese, nickel, lead, zinc in sphalerite with inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry was verified with the nation one standard material (GBW 07270). This method exhibits the relative error RE(n=8) between 1.22% and 8.47%, the relative standard deviation RSD(n=8) is between 3.43% and 8.59%, and can satisfy the analyticalrequest of the single sphalerite sample.

Key words: sphalerite, trace element, matrix matching, element disturbance