A new technique for estimating the average and total impurity concentrations in samples of high-purity substances

Abstract

A new technique in which the entire set of impurities in a substance is represented as a set of impurity classes has been developed for estimating the most likely and total concentrations of elemental impurities in samples of high-purity substances. Estimates of the purity of samples with the use of this technique have lower random and systematic errors in comparison with estimates without impurity classification. It has been shown that estimates of the integral characteristics of individual impurity classes in the total set of samples allow one to find the expectation of the total concentration for impurity classes which are represented in particular samples only by detection limits. The results are illustrated by the example of the rare-earth oxide samples in the Exhibition–Collection of Extrapure Substances.