Investigation of ultraviolet photolysis vapor generation with in-atomizer trapping graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for the determination of mercury

Generation of mercury vapor by ultraviolet irradiation of mercury solutions in low molecular weight organic acid solutions prior to measurement by Atomic Absorption Spectrometry is a cheap, simple and green method for determination of trace concentrations of mercury. In this work mercury vapor generated by ultraviolet photolysis was trapped onto a palladium coated graphite furnace significantly improving the detection limit of the method. The system was optimized and a detection limit of 0.12 µg L− 1 (compared to 2.1 µg L− 1 for a previously reported system in the absence of trapping) with a precision of 11% for a 10 µg L− 1 mercury standard (RSD, N = 5).