Determination of Thallium in Tea with Preconcentration by Microwave-Assisted Synthesized Molybdenum Disulfide Nanoparticles and Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (FAAS) Analysis

Abstract

A simple, quick and environmentally friendly microwave-assisted synthesis method was developed to produce MoS₂ nanoparticles (MoS₂NP) for the preconcentration of thallium. The characteristics of the synthesized MoS₂NP were validated by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The determination of thallium was achieved with MoS₂NP based preconcentration and a flame atomic absorption spectrophotometer (MoS₂NP-PM-FAAS). A detection limit of 14.6 µg/kg was achieved for thallium using the optimum conditions by the MoS₂-PM-FAAS method. The developed method provided an improvement in the detection power of the FAAS system by approximately 20-fold. The applicability of the method was validated with tea samples through spike recovery experiments.

Keywords:

• Flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS)
• microwave-assisted synthesized molybdenum disulfide nanoparticles
• tea analysis
• thallium

Author contributions

Büşra Tışlı: formal analysis; investigation; methodology; validation; visualization; roles/writing—original draft. Tuğçe Unutkan: formal analysis; methodology; validation; roles/writing—original draft. Sezgin Bakırdere: conceptualization; investigation; methodology; supervision; validation; writing—review and editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.