Highly sensitive and selective spectrophotometric detection of trace amounts of Hg2+ in environmental and biological samples based on 2,4,7-triamino-6-phenylpteridine

In this article, a simple, selective and sensitive spectrophotometric method for the direct determination of trace amounts of Hg2+ in aqueous samples was performed, based on complexation reaction between Hg2+ and 2,4,7-triamino-6-phenylpteridine (triamterene) with maximum absorbance at 415 nm. The important analytical parameters and their effects on the reported system were investigated. Beerʹs law was found to obey for Hg2+ in the concentration range 0.1–4.2 μg/mL with molar absorptivity of 5.32 × 104 l mol−1 cm−1 and Sandellʹs sensitivity of 8.532 ng cm−2. The interference effect of some anions and cations on the determination was described. Most importantly, the method was applied for determination of trace amount of Hg2+ in water samples, biological, plant leaves and soil samples with satisfactory results. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated in terms of studentʹs t-test and variance ratio F-test, which indicated the significance of proposed method over the reference method.