Development of cadmium/silver/palladium separation by ion chromatography with quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry detection for off-line cadmium isotopic measurements

A separation method was investigated to perform off-line cadmium isotopic measurements on a 109Ag transmutation target. Ion chromatography (IC) with Q ICPMS detection (quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry detection) was chosen to separate cadmium from the isobarically interfering elements, silver and palladium, present in the sample. The optimization of chromatographic conditions was particularly studied. Several anion and cation columns (Dionex AG11®, CS10® and CS12®) were compared with different mobile phases (HNO3, HCl). The separation procedure was achieved with a carboxylate-functionalized cation exchange CS12 column using 0.5 M HNO3 as eluent. The developed technique yielded satisfactory results in terms of separation factors (greater than 5) and provides an efficient solution to obtain rapidly purified cadmium fractions (decontamination factors higher 100,000 for silver and palladium) which can directly be analyzed by multi collection inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC ICPMS). By applying the proposed procedure, accurate and precise cadmium isotope ratios were determined for the irradiated 109Ag transmutation target.