Capillary gas chromatography ICP mass spectrometry : a powerful hyphenated technique for the determination of organometallic compounds

The development and improvement of agas chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry system, CC-TCP-MS, is described. The GC and ICP-MS are coupled with a heated stainless steel transfer line. Xe. present in the GC carrier gas, is used to facilitate the nebuliser gas flow rate setting and the positioning of the torch. Alkyltin compounds are separated by GC using a 30 m capillary column within 9 min. The necessity of applying double internal standardisation (use of Bu(3)PeSn and Xe gas as internal standards) is shown. The repeatabilities al 50 mu g/l concentration for both retention time and Feal; are better than 0.25% and 5%, respectively. The detection limits for alkyltin compounds are better than those of existing methods and range between 15 and 35 fg Sn. Finally GC-ICP-MS is applied to the determination of mono-, di- and tributyltin in some harbour waters, after extraction and Grignard derivation with PrMgCl. Concentrations between 1 and 20 ng/l are found