Antimony (Sb) was considered as a toxic metalloid element in environmental water system, the concentration of antimony in water sample was required to not be higher than 0.02 μg/mL. Miniaturized/portable analytical systems/devices were needed for on-site analysis of antimony. Herein, hydride generation was combined with a smartphone readable colorimetric method and used for the speciation analysis of inorganic antimony without chromatographic separation. Sb(III) was analyzed when masking reagent was used for Sb(V), total antimony concentration was obtained when Sb(V) was educed to Sb(III) before analysis. The conversion of Sb(Ⅲ) to SbH3 was achieved through hydride generation (HG) reaction, a redox reaction between SbH3 and HAuCl4 occurred with a result of in-situ generation of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) on test paper, changing color from pale yellow to black and allowing for colorimetric analysis with naked-eye and smartphone RGB mode. Detectable limits of 0.02 μg/mL and 0.01 μg/mL can be recognized by naked-eye and smartphone mode, respectively. This miniaturized and easy-used smartphone readable analytical system was further used for on-site analysis of inorganic antimony in real samples, recoveries of 95–105 % were obtained.
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