Propericiazine as a reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of osmium

Abstract

Propericiazine (PPC) is proposed as a new sensitive and selective reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of microgram amounts of osmium. PPC forms an orange-red colored species with osmium(VIII) or osmium(VI) instantaneously at room temperature in 6 M hydrochloric acid medium. The orange-red species exhibits maximum absorbance at 511 nm. Beer’s law is valid over the concentration range 0.1–8.0 ppm for osmium(VIII) and 0.20–10 ppm for osmium(VI). Sandell’s sensitivity of the reaction is 9.4 ng/cm2for osmium(VIII) and 13.5 ng/cm2for osmium(VI). The effects oftime, temperature, acidity, order of addition of reagents, reagent concentration and diverse ions areinvestigated. The application of the proposed method in the determination of osmium content in synthetic syserkite mineral has been explored.