Hydride Generation Interface for Speciation Analysis Coupling Capillary Electrophoresis to Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

RICHARDSON, DOUGLAS D.; KANNAMKUMARATH, SASI S.; WUILLOUD, RODOLFO G.; CARUSO, JOSEPH A.

ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Año: 2004 vol. 76 p. 7137 - 7142

0003-2700

A novel hydride generation (HG) interface for coupling capillary electrophoresis (CE) with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) is presented in this work. The CE-HG-ICPMS interface was applied to the separation and quantitation of common arsenic species. Lack of a commercially available HG interface for CE-ICPMS led to a three concentric tube design allowing alleviation of back pressure commonly observed in CE-HG-ICPMS. Due to the high sensitivity and element-specific detection of ICPMS, quantitative analysis of As(III), As(V), monomethylarsonic acid, and dimetaylarsinic acid was achieved. Optimization of CE separation conditions resulted in the use of 20 mmol L-1 sodium borate with 2% osmotic flow modifier (pH 9.0) and -20 kV applied potential for baseline resolution of each arsenic species in the shortest time. Hydride generation conditions were optimized through multiple electrophoretic separation analyses with 5% HCl and 3% NaBH4 (in 0.2% NaOH) determined to be the optimum conditions. After completion of system optimization, detection limits obtained for the arsenic species were less than 40 ng L-1 with electromigration time precision less than 1% within a total analysis time of 9.0 min. Finally, the interface was used for speciation analysis of arsenic in river and tap water samples.