Total antimony analysis by hydride generation-microwave plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy with applications

Abstract

Antimony is widely used in industrial applications. In this study, we develop a method for total antimony analysis using a hydride generation-microwave plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (HG-MP-AES) system equipped with a multimode sample introduction system (MSIS). Before analysis, antimony was reduced with potassium iodide and acidified with hydrochloric acid. The samples and a sodium tetrahydroborate/sodium hydroxide solution were infused into a spray chamber for hydride generation, MSIS. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.05 μg/L and 0.15 μg/L, respectively. Furthermore, semiconductor materials and blood samples have been analyzed in order to demonstrate the possible applications of this method. The total antimony content eluted from GaSb thin films in a pH 5 buffer agreed with the thin film structure. The spiked blood sample analysis showed that the recovery rate of antimony from the whole blood samples was 92.2 ± 1.67%. Relative standard deviations for inter-day and intra-day assays of whole blood were 1.99% and 5.31%, respectively. The developed method was determined to have good accuracy and precision with the obtained values, and can be utilized for antimony analysis in the engineering and toxicological fields.