Speciation of antimony(III) and antimony(V) by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry after ultrasound-assisted emulsification of solidified floating organic drop microextraction

A simple, sensitive and efficient method of ultrasound-assisted emulsification of solidified floating organic drop microextraction (USE-SFODME) coupled to electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry for the speciation of antimony at different oxidation state Sb(III)/Sb(V) in environmental samples was established. In this method, the hydrophobic complex of Sb(III) with sodium diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC) is extracted by 1-undecanol at pH 9.0, while Sb(V) remains in aqueous phase. Sb(V) content can be calculated by subtracting Sb(III) from the total antimony after reducing Sb(V) to Sb(III) by l-cysteine. Various factors affecting USE-SFODME including pH, extraction solvent and its volume, concentration of DDTC, sonication time, and extraction temperature were investigated. Under the optimized conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the range from 0.05 to 10.0 ng mL−1, with the limit of detection (3σ) 9.89 ng L−1 for Sb(III). The relative standard deviation for Sb(III) was 4.5% (n=9, c=1.0 ng mL−1). This method was validated against the certified reference materials (GSB 07-1376-2001, GBW07441), and applied to the speciation of antimony in environmental samples (soil and water samples) with satisfactory results.