Determination of impurities in high-purity selenium by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry after acetate-form anion-exchange separation

A rapid and sensitive method has been developed for the determination of lithium, manganese, zinc, arsenic, silver, cadmium, tellurium and lead in high-purity selenium at ng g−1 level. These elements are separated with a strongly basic anionexchange resin, Dowex 1-X8, in the acetate form and determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Since selenium, as selenious acid, is strongly adsorbed on the resin in the acetate form, the other elements can be eluted with dilute nitric acid (0.1–1.4 moll−1) before the elution of selenious acid. For spike additions between 50 and 1000 ng g−1 of these elements, good recoveries are obtained with errors between 1% and 6%. The limits of quantitation of impurities in high-purity selenium are 1 ng g−1 for lithium, 5 ng g−1 for manganese, 70 ng g−1 for zinc, 2 ng g−1 for arsenic, 8 ng g−1 for silver, 1 ng g−1 for cadmium, 5 ng g−1 for tellurium and 10 ngg−1 for lead.