Uso de modificadores permanentes em filamento de tungstênio para aprisionamento de hidretos de arsênio, selênio, antimônio e vapor de mercúrio e determinação por espectrometria de absorção atômica.

Abstract

In this work, a systematic evaluation of permanent chemical modifiers on tungsten coil atomizer for in situ trapping of selenium hydride (H2Se), arsine (AsH3), stibine (SbH3) and mercury vapor was done. The trapping occurred on tungsten coil surface coated with rhodium, iridium or ruthenium. A continuous flow system for generating the volatile species was coupled to the atomizer by a capillary quartz tube (50 mm long and 2.0 mm inner diameter) positioned at 0.5 mm from the modified tungsten surface. In this thesis, a new device for automatic in situ trapping of hydrides in tungsten coil was developed. This device is controlled by a program written in Visual Basic that is also used for management of the continuous flow system for hydride generation. This coupling can be easily implemented in any spectrometer simplifying the in situ trapping of hydrides in this electrothermal atomizer. The same system was used for the determination of Se and As in water and biological materials, and for investigating the possibilities for the determination of Sb and Hg. The coating with Rh showed higher efficiency to trap the species than Ir and Ru, resulting in better sensitivities. Using tungsten coil coated with 200 µg Rh pre-heated at 400 °C, sample flowing at 3.0 mL min-1 and trapping time of 30 s, enrichment factors of approximately 150 times for As and Se were obtained with limits of detection of 35 ng L-1 Se and 110 ng L-1 As. With Ir and Ru the enrichment factors for As and Se were 100 and 115 times, respectively. Using the proposed system it was also possible the speciation of inorganic arsenic in water samples. The evaluation of trapping efficiency on tungsten coil was made by conventional atomic absorption measurements and with the aid of radiotracers. The results obtained in the two modes of evaluation showed conflicting values, indicating a possible difference between the atomization mechanism of analytes when injected in the atomizer as liquid solution and when trapped as hydride on the tungsten coil surface with a permanent chemical modifier. The results obtained with radiotracers showed 69 ± 2% trapping efficiency of H2Se on tungsten coated with Rh. The trapping efficiencies with Ir and Ru were approximately 55%. For SbH3 the trapping efficiency was 82 ± 1% on tungsten coil coated with Rh. The behavior of generation and collection of SbH3 on tungsten coil still needs better evaluation due to the problems of reproducibility influenced by possible losses during hydride transport. Trapping of mercury vapor on tungsten coil coated with Rh showed a pronounced saturation of the tungsten surface resulting in limited linearity of calibration curve and comparatively poor repeatability ( RSD > 9%).