Study of carbon nanotubes and functionalized-carbon nanotubes as substrates for flow injection solid phase extraction associated to inductively coupled plasma with ultrasonic nebulization

A research was performed to evaluate the capabilities of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and modified CNTs to serve as sorbents for preconcentrating Cd together with on-line ultrasonic nebulization (USN)-inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICPOES). Three different carbon nanotubes sustrates namely, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), oxidized-carbon nanotubes (ox-CNTs) and l-alanine-carbon nanotubes (ala-CNTs) were studied systematically and the main factors influencing the preconcentration and determination of Cd were examined thoroughly. The CNTs evaluated showed dissimilar adsorption behaviors leading to increasing preconcentration factors when used in the proposed on-line solid phase extraction (SPE) system as follows: CNT < ala-CNT < ox-CNT. Aiming to achieve the best analytical performance, ox-CNTs were used as they enable quantitative retention of Cd at pH 7.0 and instantaneous elution of the analyte with 10% HNO3. Under optimal conditions, the adsorption capacity on ox-CNTs was found to be 130 μmol g−1 and the detection limit (3σ) achieved was 1.03 μg L− 1. The precision of the method expressed as the relative standard deviation (RSD) turned to be 3.0%. The flow injection method involving use of ox-CNTs as sorbent and USN-ICPOES for detection was successfully applied to the determination of Cd in different kinds of environmental samples.