Gas and liquid chromatography with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry detection for environmental speciation analysis - advances and limitations

Recent advances in the coupling of gas chromatography (GC) and high perform ance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with inductively coupled plasma mass spec trometry (ICP MS) and their role in trace element speciation analysis of en vironmental materials are presented. The discussion is illustrated with thr ee research examples concerning the following topics: (i) development and c oupling of multicapillary microcolumn GC with ICP MS for speciation of orga notin in sediment and biological tissue samples; (ii) speciation of arsenic in marine algae by size-exclusion-anion-exchange HPLC-ICP MS; and (iii) sp eciation of cadmium in plant cell cultures by size-exclusion HPLC-ICP MS. P articular attention is paid to the problem of signal identification in ICP MS chromatograms; the potential of electrospray MS/MS for this purpose is h ighlighted. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.