Using ICPMS/MS to determine manganese, iron, nickel, copper, zinc, cadmium and lead concentrations on less than 40ml of seawater

Science Highlights

30 April 2018

Jackson and co-workers (2018, see reference below) first did a classical offline preconcentration of small seawater aliquots using a SeaFast system. More innovative is the use of a state of the art inductively coupled plasma – tandem mass spectrometry (ICPMS/MS) to analyse the eluate. Such tool combines two mass-selecting quadrupoles separated by an octopole collision/reaction cell. The collision/reaction cell was pressurized with O2 gas for the analysis of manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) and H2 gas for the analysis of iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), which removed common interferences (e.g. ArO+ on 56Fe and MoO+ on Cd)… and the detection limits were less than 0.050 nmol/l, which is extremely low!

18 Jackson
Figure: A schematic diagram of the preconcentration and analysis of Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb in seawater samples. Seawater samples are preconcentrated using the seaFAST preconcentration system, and analysed on an ICP-MS/MS pressurized with either O2 gas (Mn, Ni, Cu, Cd and Pb) or H2 gas (Fe, Zn). Click here to view the figure larger.

Reference:

Jackson, S. L., Spence, J., Janssen, D. J., Ross, A. R. S., & Cullen, J. T. (2018). Determination of Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb in seawater using offline extraction and triple quadrupole ICP-MS/MS. Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 33(2), 304–313. http://doi.org/10.1039/C7JA00237H

 

Latest highlights

Mercury content and isotopes in bird’s guano: a window to reconstruct past climates

By analysing peat cores, Chuxian Li and her colleagues have shown how populations of nesting seabirds have fluctuated on a sub-Antarctic Island over the last 8,000 years.

Contraction of North Atlantic Deep Water during glacial times: a paradigm called into question

Blaser and co-authors propose a new distribution of deep-water masses in the Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum and the Heinrich Stadial..

Authigenic radiogenic neodymium isotope composition traces millennial-scale overturning circulation variability in the Arabian Sea

The neodymium isotopic signature of the sediment authigenic fraction is, a priori, a valuable proxy for reconstructing deep-water mass trajectories…

Magmatic activity at the Carlsberg Ridge in the Indian Ocean triggered by glacial sea-level variation

De and colleagues provide a high-resolution record of magmatic input and associated hydrothermal activity over the past 49 kyr from a core recovered from a magmatic segment of the slow-spreading Carlsberg Ridge in the Indian Ocean.

Rechercher