ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

A highly selective electrochemical sensor for trace determination and speciation of antimony (III & V) in water and soil samples using 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetone

A. Hamza, W. T. Alsaggaf, Waqas Ahmad, and M. S. El-Shahawi

Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

E-mail: malsaeed@kau.edu.sa

Received: 8 May 2019  Accepted: 5 February 2020

Abstract:

The current works extend the utility of 2-thenoyltrifluoroacetone reagent (HTTA) towards the least explored antimony (III & V) ions in complex matrices. The redox characteristics and the excellent surface coverage (Γ) of the electroactive antimony (III)-HTTA chelate onto the hanging mercury dropping electrode suggested establishing a differential pulse cathodic stripping voltammetric (DP–CSV) analysis for chemical speciation of antimony (III & V) in environmental water samples. Under the optimized conditions of pH, deposition time, potential, sweep rate, and HTTA concentration, the cathodic peak current at − 0.18 V linearly increased on growing antimony (III) concentration in a wide working range from 2.46 × 10⁻⁹ to 1.07 × 10⁻⁷ mol L⁻¹, with an obtained detection and quantification limits 7.38 × 10⁻¹⁰ and 2.46 × 10⁻⁹ mol L⁻¹, respectively. The figure of merits were compared successfully with some reported electrochemical, chromatographic, and spectrochemical methods. The established DP–CSV method has a unique advantages (rapid response, short analytical time, sensitive, selective, and reproducible) to be quantitatively applied for trace analysis of antimony (III & V) species in fresh and marine water (the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea) samples. The settled method was also validated (Student’s t and F tests at P = 0.05) by comparison with the official inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) method.

Keywords: Differential pulse cathodic stripping voltammetry; Antimony determination; Thenoyltrifluoroacetone; Chemical speciation; Redox characteristics

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-020-01092-7

Chemical Papers 74 (9) 2917–2927 (2020)