A Compact Spectrophotometer Using Liquid Core Waveguide and Handheld Charge Coupled Device: For Green Method and Ultrasensitive Speciation Analysis of Cr(III) and Cr(VI)

ABSTRACT

In this short letter, we report a compact spectrophotometer consisting of a liquid core waveguide as the optical cell and a handheld charge coupled device spectrometer as the detector. This instrumentation features portability, ultrahigh sensitivity, simultaneous multicomponent detection, and minimal analyte solution. Its ultrahigh sensitivity permits the measurement of Cr(III) without coloration with any reagents. Therefore, a simple, fast, cost-effective, and green analytical method was developed for the ultrasensitive and simultaneous speciation analysis of Cr(III) and Cr(VI) in water samples, with the limits of detection down to the ppb level.

KEYWORDS:

• charge coupled device
• Cr(III)
• Cr(VI)
• Green Analytical Chemistry
• liquid core waveguide
• speciation analysis
• spectrophotometer

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We acknowledge the financial support from the Ministry of Education of China for the research on green analytical chemistry (NCET-04-0869).

Notes

An invited paper submitted to a special issue on Green Spectroscopy and Analytical Techniques, organized by Professor Miguel de la Guardia, of the Department of Chemistry, University of Valencia, Spain, and Professor Arabinda Kumar Das, of the Department of Chemistry, University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India.