Vapor generation of scandiumassociated to ICP-OES detection

SOLEDAD CERUTTI; LUIS A. ESCUDERO; JOSE A. GAZQUEZ; ROBERTO A. OLSINA; LUIS DANTE MARTINEZ

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Eleventh Rio Symposium on Atomic Spectrometry; 2010

Generation of volatile derivatives represents an important step in many analytical methods and protocols for determination and speciation of trace elements1, 2. The vapor generation approaches have expanded in scope in recent years in response to the reports of the successful generation of a number of ‘‘unconventional’’ volatile species1-5. To the best of our knowledge, this work reports on the first generation of a volatile species of scandium resulting from the merging of an acidified sample stream with sodium tetrahydroborate reductant. The gaseous analyte was subsequently introduced via Ar carrier into the torch of an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). The aim of this study was to undertake a multivariate (2-level full factorial design) optimization of the variables influencing both physical and vapor generation aspects in an effort to illustrate its analytical utility in an application to the determination of scandium in a Certified Reference Material.