Determination of arsenic by high power nitrogen microwave induced plasma atomic emission spectrometry with hydride generation technique

High power nitrogen microwave induced plasma was used as a new excitation source for atomic emission spectrometry to determine low concentrations of arsenic in combination with hydride generation technique. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the best attainable detection limits at As(I)188.979 nm was 3.13 ngAs/ml with a linear dynamic range of 10 to 5000 ngAs/ml. The presence of several diverse elements has been found to cause more or less a depressing interference with the determination of arsenic by the present technique. The present method was applied to the determination of total arsenic in the samples of sea weed and scallop to be issued as standard reference materials by National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan. The samples were dissolved in a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids with the addition of hydrofluoric acid. The results obtained by this method were very reproducible and satisfactory.