Elimination of the carbon build-up effect in the ETAAS analysis of low diluted serum samples using an in situ wet digestion with tetramethylammonium hydroxide. Application to aluminium determination

Agostinho A. Almeida; José L. F. C. Lima

doi:10.1039/B001589J

You do not have JavaScript enabled. Please enable JavaScript to access the full features of the site or access our non-JavaScript page.

Agostinho A. Almeida¹ and José L. F. C. Lima¹

Author affiliations

¹ CEQUP/Departamento de Química-Física, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Aníbal Cunha 164, Porto, Portugal

Abstract

A simple and effective procedure to minimise the accumulation of carbonaceous residues inside the graphite tube during the electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometric (ETAAS) determination of aluminium in human serum is described. The procedure involves the addition of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) to the injected samples to effect an in situ wet digestion of the serum proteins. Results obtained showed that the addition of 5 µl of 1 mol l⁻¹ TMAH to each 15 µl sample injection allows the repeated analysis of over 200 serum samples (diluted 1 + 1 with a diluting solution containing 1 g l⁻¹ K₂Cr₂O₇, 0.5% v/v Triton X-100 and 0.2% v/v HNO₃) with no evidence of a carbon build-up effect. Compared with the same ETAAS procedure without the addition of TMAH, a good improvement in repeatability, long-term precision and accuracy was achieved.

Download options Please wait...

Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/B001589J
Article type: Inter-laboratory Note
Submitted: 28 Feb 2000
Accepted: 15 Jun 2000
First published: 17 Jul 2000

Download Citation

J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2000,15, 1019-1024

Permissions

Request permissions