Laser induced-thermal lens spectrometry after cloud point extraction for the determination of trace amounts of palladium

Abstract

Cloud point extraction (CPE) in combination with thermal lens spectrometry (TLS) has been developed for the preconcentration and determination of palladium. TLS and CPE methods have good matching conditions for the combination because TLS is a suitable method for the analysis of low volume samples obtained after CPE. Palladium was complexed with 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN) as a complexing agent in an aqueous medium and concentrated by octylphenoxypolyethoxyethanol (Triton X-114) as a surfactant. After the phase separation at 60 °C based on the cloud point extraction of the mixture, the surfactant-rich phase was dried and the remaining phase was dissolved using 20 μL of carbon tetrachloride. The obtained solution was introduced into a quartz microcell and the analyte was determined by laser induced-thermal lens spectrometry (LI-TLS). The single-laser TLS was used as a sensitive method for the determination of palladium–PAN complex in 20 μL of the sample. Under optimum conditions, the analytical curve was linear for the concentration range of 0.3–60 ng mL −1 and the detection limit was 0.04 ng mL −1. The enhancement factor of 460 was achieved for 10 mL samples containing the analyte and relative standard deviations were lower than 5%. The developed method was successfully applied to the extraction and determination of palladium in water samples.