Use of Organic Solvents:

In the early development stages of AAS, it was observed that analyte solutions containing organic solvents of low molar mass e.g. alcohols, ethers, ketones and esters enhanced absorption peaks.  This has been attributed to the increased rate of aspiration, nebulisation efficiency, formation of finer droplets, and more efficient evaporation or combustion of the solvent. In favourable cases, up to three fold increase in sensitivity could be obtained by adding a miscible organic solvent such as acetone to the solution. Therefore, this makes the sample solution more dilute which more or less defeats the purpose of achieving enhanced sensitivity.