Simultaneous determination of trace concentrations of arsenic, antimony, bismuth, selenium and tellurium in aqueous solution by introduction of the gaseous hydrides into an inductively coupled plasma source for emission spectrometry. Part I. Preliminary studies

Abstract

In the simultaneous determination of arsenic, antimony, bismuth, selenium and tellurium by measurement of the atomic line emission from the elements in an inductively coupled plasma source after their introduction as the gaseous hydrides, two types of possible interferences were investigated. Mutual interferences between the analytes were found to be negligible under the operating conditions used. The presence of certain metal ions in solution resulted in low recoveries of some of the analytes, especially selenium and tellurium. However, this could be overcome by prior separation of the analytes by co-precipitation on lanthanum hydroxide.