Development of a selective and sensitive spectrophotometric method for the trace determination of thallium(III) using 3-methyl-2-benzothiazolinone hydrazone hydrochloride and N-(1-naphthyl)-ethylenediamine dihydrochloride.

A simple, selective, sensitive, and rapid spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of thallium(III) using 3-methyl-2-benzothiazolinone hydrazone hydrochloride and N-(1-naphthyl)-ethylenediamine dihydrochloride. The obtained product had an absorption maximum of 590 nm. Beer's law was valid over the concentration range of 0.15-8 microg/mL. The molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity of the colored system were 2.93 x 10(4) L/mol x cm and 0.00723 microg/mL, respectively. The effect of different acids on the sensitivity of the method, interference by foreign substances, the optimum reaction conditions, and other analytical parameters were evaluated. The proposed method has been successfully applied in the analysis of T1(III) in standard reference materials, synthetic mixtures, and water and urine samples. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated in terms of Student's t-test and variance ratio F-test, which indicated the significance of the proposed method over reported methods.