Simultaneous determination of antimony(III) and antimony(V) by UV–vis spectroscopy and partial least squares method (PLS)

This paper describes a procedure for the speciation of antimony by UV–vis spectroscopy using pyrogallol as complexing agent. A partial least squares (PLS) regression was performed to resolve highly overlapping spectrophotometric signals obtained from mixtures of Sb(III) and Sb(V). The relative error in absolute value was less than 5% when concentrations of several mixtures were calculated. The minimum concentration determined was 3.96 × 10−5 mol dm−3 and 3.98 × 10−5 mol dm−3 for Sb(V) and Sb(III), respectively. The analysis of the possible effect of the presence of foreign ions in the solution was performed and the procedure was successfully applied to the speciation of antimony in pharmaceutical preparations and aqueous samples.