Method development for slurry sampling Preliminary experiments have shown that injection of 20 μL of the wheat flour slurry (plus 10 μL of modifier solution) did not provide sufficient sensitivity for the determination of cadmium in the wheat flour samples. Significantly greater volumes of slurry could not be injected without the risk of an overflow because of the limited capacity of the platform. One possible solution of this problem would have been to prepare more concentrated slurry; however, difficulties have been encountered with the stability of the slurry in this case so that this approach was not further considered. A pre-concentration step using multiple injections was therefore investigated in order to reach an appropriate level of sensitivity. Twenty microliters of the slurry were injected into the graphite tube, followed by a thorough drying stage (steps 1–3 in Table 1) before the next aliquot was injected. After the last slurry injection, 10 μL of the chemical modifier solution (30 μg Pd + 12 μg Mg + 0.05% Triton X-100) was injected and the full temperature program shown in Table 1 was executed. Fig. 5 shows the absorption signals obtained for a wheat flour sample after the injection of one, three and five aliquots of 20 μL of slurry into the graphite tube. The increase in integrated absorbance was directly proportional to the number of aliquots injected into the graphite tube, i.e., to the sample mass. Atomization signals for Cd obtained for one, three and five 20-μL aliquots of 1% ... Fig. 5. Atomization signals for Cd obtained for one, three and five 20-μL aliquots of 1% (m/v) wheat flour slurry into the graphite tube with 30 μg Pd + 12 μg Mg + 0.05% (v/v) Triton X-100 as chemical modifier. Tpyr = 800 °C; Tat = 1600 °C. Figure options The pyrolysis curves established with an aqueous standard solution and a wheat flour slurry, which are shown in Fig. 6, are quite similar to those in Fig. 3 obtained for direct SS. The minor differences in the shape of the curves and in the maximum loss-free pyrolysis temperatures (850 °C for the aqueous standard solution compared to 900 °C in Fig. 3) are most likely due to the different tubes and platforms used for SS and SlS, respectively. The SS platform has a different mass and is inserted loosely into the SS tube, whereas the PIN platform is permanently fixed in the tube. This might result in a different heat transfer from the tube to the platform and slightly different apparent pyrolysis temperatures for the two platforms. The optimum pyrolysis temperature, however, was the same as for direct SS analysis, i.e., 800 °C, and the optimum atomization temperature was 1600 °C. Pyrolysis curves for (○) 0.02ng Cd standard and (■) 1.0% (m/v) wheat flour ... Fig. 6. Pyrolysis curves for (○) 0.02 ng Cd standard and (■) 1.0% (m/v) wheat flour slurry (5 × 20 μL), both with 30 μg Pd + 12 μg Mg + 0.05% (v/v) Triton X-100 as the chemical modifier. Tat = 1600 °C. Figure options The atomization signals obtained under these conditions are shown in Fig. 7. Like in the case of direct SS, the signals for the aqueous standard and five injections of 20 μL aliquots of the wheat flour slurry are very similar in appearance time and peak shape, and there is essentially no background absorption visible. The significantly earlier appearance time and sharper peak shape compared to the signals obtained with SS (Fig. 4) are again due to the smaller mass of the PIN compared to the SS platform and the different heat transfer mechanisms. An additional factor that influences the peak shape is the absence of a dosing hole in case of the SS tube, which results in a longer residence time of the atoms in the absorption volume.