Cadmium and cobalt ions enhanced-photochemical vapor generation for determination of trace rhenium by ICP-MS
Yafei Zhen, Hanjiao Chen, Meng Zhang, Jing Hu, Xiandeng Hou
Abstract
A brief review of photochemical vapor generation (PVG) with 86 references is first presented, with special emphasis on the methods to improve vapor generation efficiency, then the efficiency of PVG of rhenium was reported to be enhanced by Cd2+ and Co2+, which was used for sample introduction into inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for sensitive determination of trace Re. In the medium of 20% (v/v) formic acid, 15% (v/v) acetic acid, 30 mg L−1 of Cd2+ and 5 mg L−1 of Co2+, the PVG efficiency of rhenium was enhanced by 19-fold, under 90 s UV irradiation. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) was utilized to investigate its possible reaction mechanism. Under the optimized experimental conditions, a limit of detection (LOD) of 1 ng L−1 was obtained for rhenium. Water samples were analyzed by the proposed method, with analytical results in good agreement with those obtained by conventional pneumatic nebulization (PN) ICP-MS.