Cold vapor generation interface for mercury speciation coupling capillary electrophoresis with electrothermal quartz tube furnace atomic absorption spectrometry: determination of mercury and methylmercury.

A novel on-line coupled capillary electrophoresis (CE) cold vapor generation (CVG) with electrothermal quartz tube furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (EQTF-AAS) system for mercury speciation has been developed. The mercury species (inorganic mercury and methylmercury) were completely separated by CE in a 80 cm length x 100 microm i.d. fused-silica capillary at 20 kV and using a buffer of 100 mM boric acid and 10% (v/v) methanol (pH 8.30). The effects of the inner diameter of quartz tube, the acidity of HCl, the NaBH(4) concentration and N(2) flow rate on Hg signal intensity were investigated. Speciation of mercury was highlighted using CE-CVG-EQTF-AAS. The detection limits of methylmercury and mercury were 0.035 and 0.027 microg mL(-1), respectively. The precisions (RSDs) of peak height for six replicate injections of a mixture of 10 microg mL(-1) (as Hg) were better than 4%. The interface was used for speciation analysis of mercury in dry goldfish muscle.