Direct determination of trace cadmium in environmental samples by dynamic reaction cell inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

• Published in: Chemosphere (Oxford) Vol. 81; no. 11; pp. 1463 - 1468
• Main Authors: Guo, Wei, Hu, Shenghong, Xiao, Yufang, Zhang, Hongfei, Xie, Xianjun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2010; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Cadmium; Cadmium - analysis; Cadmium - chemistry; Dynamic reaction cell inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry; Dynamics; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Environmental Pollutants - analysis; Environmental Pollutants - chemistry; Environmental samples; Exact sciences and technology; Flow rate; Hydroxides; Inductively coupled plasma; Mass Spectrometry; Metal oxides; Oxidation-Reduction; Oxide/hydroxide interference; Oxides; Oxygen - chemistry; Pollution; Rejection; Standard reference materials; Cadmium; Oxide/hydroxide interference; Dynamic reaction cell inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry; Environmental samples; Trace analysis; Trace element; ICP mass spectroscopy; Reference material; Sediments; Heavy metal
• ISSN: 0045-6535; 1879-1298; 1879-1298
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2010.08.056

Cadmium is subject to significant Zr and Mo based oxide/hydroxide interferences in ICP-MS analysis of environmental samples. In this work, a dynamic reaction cell (DRC) technology was used to eliminate these metal oxide/hydroxide interferences. The potentially interfering ions 94Zr 16OH +, 94Mo 16OH + and 95Mo 16O + on 111Cd + were oxidized to higher oxides 94ZrO 2H +/ 94ZrO 3H +, 94MoO 2H +/ 94MoO 3H +, and 95 MoO 2 + / 95 MoO 3 + by O 2 as the reaction gas in DRC. Under the optimized O 2 flow rate (2.0 mL min −1) and DRC rejection parameter q (Rpq, 0.75), the background signal was reduced by up to 100-fold at m/z 111 and the limit of quantitation (LOQ, 10σ) of 0.1 ng g −1 was obtained. The proposed method was applied to direct analysis of trace Cd in a series of soil and sediment standard reference materials and the satisfactory results showed that it has great potential for the direct determination of trace or ultra-trace levels of cadmium in environmental samples.