Electrochemical generation of tellurium and bismuth hydrides for AAS

Tellurium and bismuth are non-biogenous elements, which can be accumulated in human body. The aim of this work is focused on the determination of these elements by the electrochemical hydride generation with non-membrane electrolytic cell with quartz tube - atomic absorption spectrometry. The first step of the work was to optimize parameters for the continuous setup measurements and to obtain its figures of merit. After this, the arrangement with most suitable conditions for determination of these elements was converted to the flow injection setup (FIA) and all experimental parameters were again optimized and its figures of merit were obtained. The conditions of hydride generation were studied for platinum, lead and silver cathodes with hydrochloric and sulphuric acids and their sodium salts as electrolytes. The optimizations of the FIA setup were performed on platinum cathode in hydrochloric acid for bismuth and on lead cathode in sulphuric acid for tellurium. The limit of detection achieved for the generation of tellurium hydride was 1.1 ppm with a linear range up to 20 ppm; for the bismuth hydride the limit of detection was 9.5 ppm and limit of linearity 50 ppm. Keywords Bismuth, tellurium, electrochemical hydride generation, atomic absorption spectroscopy, flow injection analysi