ELEMENTAL SPECIATION AND COUPLED TECHNIQUES - TOWARDS FASTER AND RELIABLE ANALYSES - PLENARY LECTURE

Various procedures for accelerated and simplified sample preparation a nd analyte introduction into a plasma source spectrometer are develope d and evaluated for speciation analysis of organometallic compounds us ing the example of alkyl and arylmetals and cyanocobalamin analogues. The topics discussed include microwave-assisted chemistry in three pha se systems (solid-liquid-liquid and solid-liquid-gas), purge and capil lary trap sample preparation and fast chromatography (multicapillary G C and microparticulate stationary phase reversed-phase LC) as a sample introduction technique for MIP-AES and ICP-MS, respectively, Integrat ion of the sample preparation and of the chromatographic separation st eps into a single instrumental module las an accessory for atomic spec trometry) is evaluated, Attention is given to the reliability of infor mation obtained in the case when standards are not available and when the target analytes are poorly defined (speciation of Cd bound to meta llothionein isoforms), The utility of a dual orthogonal approach (comp lementary separation and complementary detection techniques) is demons trated.