Premium
On‐line hyphenation of capillary electrophoresis with flame‐heated furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for trace mercury speciation
Author(s) -
Li Yan,
Jiang Yan,
Yan XiuPing
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
electrophoresis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.666
H-Index - 158
eISSN - 1522-2683
pISSN - 0173-0835
DOI - 10.1002/elps.200406152
Subject(s) - mercury (programming language) , detection limit , chemistry , atomic absorption spectroscopy , capillary electrophoresis , analytical chemistry (journal) , certified reference materials , chromatography , vaporization , analyte , boric acid , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) was directly interfaced to flame‐heated furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (FHF‐AAS) via a laboratory‐made thermospray interface for nanoliter trace element speciation. The CE‐FHF‐AAS interface integrated the superiorities of stable CE separation, complete sample introduction, and continuous vaporization for AAS detection without the need of extra external heat sources and any post‐column derivation steps. To demonstrate the usefulness of the developed hybrid technique for speciation analysis, three environmentally significant and toxic forms of methylmercury (MeHg), phenylmercury (PhHg), and inorganic mercury (Hg(II)) were taken as model analytes. Baseline separation of the three mercury species was achieved by CE in a 60 cm long×75 µm inner diameter fused‐silica capillary at 20 kV and using a mixture of 100 m M boric acid and 10% v/v methanol (pH 8.30) as running electrolyte. The precision (relative standard deviation, RSD, n = 7) of migration time, peak area and peak height for the mercury species at 500 µg·L −1 (as Hg) level were in the range of 0.9–1.2%, 1.5–1.9%, and 1.4–2.0%, respectively. The detection limit (S/N = 3) of three mercury species was 3.0 ± 0.15 pg (as Hg), corresponding to 50.8 ± 2.4 µ;g·L −1 (as Hg) for 60 nL sample injection, which was almost independent on specific mercury species. The developed hybrid technique was successfully applied to the speciation analysis of mercury in a certified reference material (DORM‐2, dogfish muscle).