Revista de técnicas analíticas y bioanalíticas

Abstracto

Speciation via Hyphenation - Metal Speciation in Geological and Environmental Samples by CE-ICP-MS

Christina Hein, Jonas M Sander and Ralf Kautenburger

This review deals with different aspects of analytical speciation methods developed for metals and metal-containing biomolecules or metal complexes with natural organic and inorganic matter in geological and environmental samples. An overview of recent studies dealing with metal speciation in various geological and environmental sample matrices is presented. The focus of analytical speciation methods is limited to capillary electrophoresis (CE) hyphenated with Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) detection techniques. The main aspects discussed in this review are the separation and detection step for the metal species. Possible influences of the applied separation technique on the metal speciation have been considered. Prominent exampes are, the metal-NOM (natural organic matter) complex stability during the separation step by the use of CE or the problem of ion-exchange and adsorption processes in the case of silica tubes as CE-capillaries. Additionally, different matrix effects in ICP-MS analysis will be discussed. Furthermore, the major drawback of speciation analysis is the lack of suitable reference or standard materials for the purpose of quality assurance. Therefore, quantification and verification of separation efficiency and accuracy for both the separation and detection step of the species have been evaluated, too.