The speciation of organotin compounds in seawater by micellar LC/ICP-MS

Abstract

The speciation of ultra trace organotin compounds has been developed using micellar LC/ICP-MS. The optimum operation condition was studied in detail. YMC-Pack FL-C4 (30×4.6 mm) was used as the separation column. The optimum mobile phase was a 40 mM tris(hydroxymethyl) amino methane dodecyl sulfate, 75 mM ammonium nitrate, 3%v/v acetic acid and 20% ethanol solution. A 100 µl injection volume of sample solution was best. The longest retention time was ca. 20 min. The relative standard deviation (n = 5) was below 2% for the analysis of artificial seawater containing tributyltin(TBT), dibutyltin(DBT), triphenyltin(TPT) and diphenyltin(DPT), which amounts are all 50 ng. The limits of detection (3a of blank values) were 27 pg (TBT), 25 (TPT), 35 (DBT), 52 (DPT) and 97 (MPT). The solid phase extraction using a polymer of styrene derivative/metacrylic ester as solid phase sorbent (Excel-pack SPE-GLF, Yokogawa, Japan) was applied for separation and concentration of TBT and TPT in seawaters. Consequently, their speciation could be sensitively and reliably performed with the proposed method. © 1995, The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry. All rights reserved.