New Developments in Flow Injection/Sequential Injection On‐line Separation and Preconcentration Coupled with Electrothermal Atomic Absorption Spectrometry for Trace Metal Analysis

Abstract

During the last 30 years, flow injection analysis has gone through three generations, that is, the first generation in 1970s, supplemented by sequential injection in the 1990s as the second generation, and the recently emerged lab‐on‐valve system as the third generation, which holds clear advantages for instrumental miniaturization. The three generations have revolutionized the concept of sample pretreatment by facilitating on‐line operation and coupling with various detection techniques, among which its hyphenation with electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS) has been one of the most attractive research field offering vast potentials and versatilities in the quantification of ultra‐trace metal species in complex matrices. In the present mini‐review, the state‐of‐the‐art developments for flow injection on‐line sample pretreatment coupled to ETAAS for trace metal analysis since 2003 were summarized, with special emphasis on the exploitations of the lab‐on‐valve system.

Keywords:

• Flow injection
• sequential injection
• lab‐on‐valve
• on‐line separation and preconcentration
• ETAAS

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of China (20575010, 20635010), the key project for scientific research from Ministry of Education (105056), and the SRFDP program (20050145026).