Plastic materials are often found on crime scenes in improvised explosive devices. Determining the trace-elemental composition of polymer parts may yield discrimination between samples from different sources. Although quantitative laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is well established for forensic glass analysis, the lack of sufficiently reproducible and homogeneous reference standards hampers accurate quantification of trace elements in polymers. Therefore, the present study introduces a new standard for quantitative elemental profiling of polymers. A novel approach was developed for producing polyethylene (PE), polystyrene (PS), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) standards containing 23 elements at three concentrations. The LA-ICP-TOF-MS measurements showed excellent linear response with R² > 0.99 for almost all elements and polymer matrices. Additionally, homogeneity was significantly improved to an average of 10% within-, and 17% between-sample variation. PVC and PE matrices presented the best homogeneity which was confirmed by line ablations. The added value of the standards was demonstrated by evaluating a set of realistic forensic polymer evidence items. The between-run variation was substantially reduced from 42% in absence of calibration to 30% when correcting with an elemental internal standard and even to 24% when applying the novel standards. In addition, its discriminating power between different classes was increased, as demonstrated by ANOVA and principal component analysis. In conclusion, this study shows the feasibility of using a novel standard for quantitative analysis of chemical attribution signatures of trace elements in polymers by LA-ICP-TOF-MS. The use of the polymer standards significantly improves classification and forensic comparison of polymer-based evidence.

犯罪现场的简易爆炸装置中经常发现塑料材料。确定聚合物部件的微量元素组成可以区分不同来源的样品。尽管定量激光烧蚀电感耦合等离子体质谱 (LA-ICP-MS) 已广泛应用于法医玻璃分析，但缺乏足够重复性和均匀的参考标准阻碍了聚合物中痕量元素的准确定量。因此，本研究引入了聚合物定量元素分析的新标准。开发了一种新方法，用于生产包含 23 种元素、三种浓度的聚乙烯 (PE)、聚苯乙烯 (PS) 和聚氯乙烯 (PVC) 标准品。LA-ICP-TOF-MS 测量显示 R ^{2具有出色的线性响应} 对于几乎所有元素和聚合物基质，> 0.99。此外，同质性显着提高，样本内变异平均为 10%，样本间变异平均为 17%。PVC 和 PE 基质呈现出最佳的均匀性，这通过线烧蚀得到了证实。通过评估一组现实的法医聚合物证据项目，证明了标准的附加价值。运行间变异从没有校准时的 42% 大幅降低到使用元素内标校正时的 30%，甚至应用新标准时降低到 24%。此外，方差分析和主成分分析表明，其不同类别之间的区分能力有所增强。综上所述，这项研究表明了使用新标准通过 LA-ICP-TOF-MS 定量分析聚合物中微量元素的化学属性特征的可行性。聚合物标准的使用显着改善了基于聚合物的证据的分类和法医比较。