OPTIMIZATION STUDY FOR THE SPECIATION ANALYSIS OF ORGANOTIN AND ORGANOGERMANIUM COMPOUNDS BY ON-COLUMN CAPILLARY GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY WITH FLAME PHOTOMETRIC DETECTION USING QUARTZ SURFACE-INDUCED LUMINESCENCE

A laboratory-designed flame photometric detector (FPD) using quartz su rface-induced luminescence was used for the on-column capillary chroma tographic determination of organotin and organogermanium compounds. Th e detector response depends on gas flow-rates, detector temperature an d the operation mode. The linear range is up to four orders of magnitu de for organotin and up to three orders of magnitude for organogermani um compounds. The minimum detectable amounts, defined as the signal eq ual to three times the standard deviation (3 sigma) of the baseline no ise, vary with the species detected and range from 0.7 to 2.3 pg for e thylated butyl- and phenyltin species and from 50 to 100 pg for pentyl ated dimethyl-, trimethyl- and tetrabutylgermanium. The determination of butyltin compounds in water and sediments was evaluated in comparis on with a GC-AAS system. The proposed method is simple, highly sensiti ve and reproducible.