A novel analytical system involving hydride generation and gold-coated W-coil trapping atomic absorption spectrometry for selenium determination at ng l- 1 level

Abstract

A novel analytical technique was developed where gaseous hydrogen selenide formed by sodium tetrahydroborate reduction is transported to and trapped on a resistively heated gold-coated W-coil atom trap for in situ preconcentration. Gold coating on W-coil was prepared by using an organic solution of Au. The atom trap is held at 165 °C during the collection stage and is heated up to 675 °C for revolatilization; analyte species formed are transported to an externally heated quartz T-tube where the atomization takes place and the transient signal is obtained. The carrier gas consisted of 112.5 ml min- 1 Ar with 75 ml min- 1 H2 during the collection step and 112.5 ml min- 1 Ar with 450 ml min- 1 H2 in the revolatilization step. The half width of the transient signal obtained is less than 0.5 s. The RSD for the measurements was found to be 3.9% (n = 11) for 0.10 μg l- 1 Se using peak height measurements. The calibration plot for 27.0 ml of sample collected in 4.0 min using a flow rate of 6.75 ml min- 1 was linear between 0.13 and 2.0 μg l- 1 of Se. The limit of detection (3 s) is 39 ng l- 1. The enhancement factor for the characteristic concentration (Co) was found to be 20.1 when compared to conventional hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry system without trap. In order to check the accuracy of the method, standard reference material, natural water NIST 1640 was employed; the result was found to be in good agreement with the certified value at the 95% confidence level. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.