Low-temperature volatilization of Be acetylacetonate for sample introduction in ETV-ICP-AES

A new method for determination of trace beryllium by electrothermal vaporization (ETV)-inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) with the use of acetylacetone as chemical modifier is developed. Trace beryllium was vaporized as acetylacetonate into plasma at a low-temperature of 700 degreesC, and the vaporization behavior of acetylacetonate of beryllium was investigated in detail. Under the optimized conditions, beryllium acetylacetonate could be quantitatively vaporized. The detection limit of beryllium was 0.2 ng ml(-1), compared with the conventional pneumatic nebulization ICP-AES, the detection limit could be improved by 45-fold. The relative standard deviations for 0.01 mug ml(-1) of Be was 4.1%. The linear range of the calibration curve covered three orders of magnitude. The proposed method was applied to the determination of trace beryllium in human hair standard reference material and the results obtained were in good agreement with the reference values. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.