A hollow cathode lamp is used as a spectral line source for Atomic Absorption (AA) instruments. AAS lamps utilize the hollow cathode effect to generate light at wavelengths for the element of interest. The emission line selected must avoid wavelength overlaps, and have good intensity with low noise. A lamp is required for each element, although a multi-element lamp enables multiple elements to be determined using the same lamp.

Agilent offers a wide range of single and multi-element hollow cathode lamps. Our coded lamps provide automatic lamp recognition, which reduces operator errors when using many lamps in an AAS instrument.
Our uncoded lamps provide economical operation, superb performance and suit all Agilent and most other AAS systems.
Our high intensity UltrAA lamps replace conventional HCLs in Agilent AAS systems where improved sensitivity and lower detection limits are required.