A sensitive and accurate analytical method for the determination of cadmium in food samples: Molybdenum coated T-shape slotted quartz tube flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry

Abstract

In this study, a molybdenum coated T-shaped slotted quartz tube atom trap flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry method (Mo coated-T-SQT-AT-FAAS) was developed for the determination of cadmium with on-line preconcentration. Inner surface of T-SQT was coated with molybdenum to enhance the trapping efficiency. Hydrogen gas was used instead of organic solvents to release trapped atoms. Limit of detection and quantification were found to be 0.057 and 0.082 µg/L, respectively. The developed method has a linear working range between 0.10 and 1.0 µg/L with a low %RSD value (<3.7). About 1202 times enhancement in detection power was recorded over the conventional FAAS system. Recovery experiments were used to determine the applicability of the method developed to real samples (linden, milk powder and mint) and significant results (94.4–100.7%) were obtained for the samples spiked at 0.30, 0.50 and 1.0 µg/L. The method was also applied to Tomato Leaves 1573a SRM to check the accuracy.