Cadmium and cobalt ions enhanced-photochemical vapor generation for determination of trace rhenium by ICP-MS

Abstract

A brief review of photochemical vapor generation (PVG) with 86 references is first presented, with special emphasis on the methods to improve vapor generation efficiency, then the efficiency of PVG of rhenium was reported to be enhanced by Cd²⁺ and Co²⁺, which was used for sample introduction into inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for sensitive determination of trace Re. In the medium of 20% (v/v) formic acid, 15% (v/v) acetic acid, 30 mg L⁻¹ of Cd²⁺ and 5 mg L⁻¹ of Co²⁺, the PVG efficiency of rhenium was enhanced by 19-fold, under 90 s UV irradiation. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) was utilized to investigate its possible reaction mechanism. Under the optimized experimental conditions, a limit of detection (LOD) of 1 ng L⁻¹ was obtained for rhenium. Water samples were analyzed by the proposed method, with analytical results in good agreement with those obtained by conventional pneumatic nebulization (PN) ICP-MS.

Keywords:

• Photochemical vapor generation
• nanomaterial
• transition metal ion
• rhenium
• inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry
• inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry
• atomic fluorescence spectrometry

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22074097), the Ministry of Education of China through the 111 Project (Grant No. B17030), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities for financial support for our research.

Additional information

Funding

Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China.