A novel capillary microextraction on ordered mesoporous titania coating combined with electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for the determination of V, Cr and Cu in environmental and biological samples.

In this work, an ordered mesoporous titania film was introduced to coat a capillary by means of sol-gel technique. Sol-gel titania coating was developed for the preconcentration/separation of trace V, Cr and Cu by capillary microextraction (CME), and the adsorbed analytes were eluted for electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ETV-ICP-MS) detection. By immobilizing sol-gel titania on the inner surface of a fused-silica microextraction capillary, the sol-gel titania coating was prepared easily. Its adsorption properties, stability and the factors affecting the adsorption behaviors of V, Cr and Cu were investigated in detail. At pH range of 7 to 9, the titania-coated capillary (50 cm x 0.25 mm) is selective towards V, Cr and Cu, and the target analytes could be desorbed quantitatively with 50 microl of 1.0 mol l(-1) HNO3 at the rate of 0.05 ml min(-1). With a consumption of 2 ml sample solution, an enrichment factor of 33.3, and a detection limit (3 s) of 1.1 pg ml(-1) (10.5 fg) for V; 3.3 pg ml(-1) (33.0 fg) for Cr and 6.3 pg ml(-1) (63.1 fg) for Cu respectively were obtained. The precisions Relative Standard Deviations (RSDs) for nine replicate measurements of 1 ng ml(-1) V, Cr and Cu were 3.4, 5.1 and 6.4%, respectively. The proposed method has been applied to the determination of V, Cr and Cu in human urine and lake water, and the recoveries for these elements were 89.2 approximately 105%. The developed method was also applied to the determination of the target elements in NIES No. 10-a (rice flour-unpolished) and NIES No. 9 (sargasso) certified reference materials, and the results found are in good agreement with the certified values.