Development of a novel alternating quadrilinear decomposition algorithm for the kinetic analysis of four-way room-temperature phosphorescence data

• Four-way room-temperature phosphorescence data were obtained for the first time.
• A new alternating quadrilinear decomposition algorithm was developed in the paper.
• PARAFAC, AWRCQLD and AQLD were applied to investigate the hydrolysis of carbaryl.
• Spectral background drift was overcome by modeling the drift as one component.
• The work opened a new way for four-way data generation and third-order calibration.

Four-way room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) data recorded by following the kinetic evolution of excitation–emission phosphorescence matrices (EEPMs) have been analyzed for the first time by third-order calibration based on parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC), alternating weighted residue constraint quadrilinear decomposition (AWRCQLD) and alternating quadrilinear decomposition (AQLD) algorithms. The AQLD constructed in pseudo-fully stretched matrix forms of quadrilinear model was a new third-order calibration algorithm, which was developed as a direct extension of alternating trilinear decomposition for quadrilinear data. These methodologies were applied to investigate the hydrolysis kinetic of carbaryl even in the presence of an uncalibrated phosphorescence background and comparisons among them were done subsequently. Spectral background drift produced in measured dataset was overcome by means of modeling the drift as an additional component as well as the analyte of interest in the mathematical model. Satisfactory results were obtained for determination of carbaryl in spiked tap water samples. The spectral and kinetic time profiles resolved by these methodologies were in good agreement with experimental observations. The present work successfully faced the difficulty in investigating the hydrolysis kinetic of analyte with the RTP techniques, opening a new approach for third-order data generation and subsequent third-order calibration.