ABSTRACT
This chapter describes metal ion speciation using gas chromatography (GC). It discusses various aspects of metal ion speciation, such as application, optimization, mechanisms, extraction and derivatization. GC is the choice technique for speciation of organometallic species due to the development of modern detectors and their coupling with GC. Furthermore, developments in capillary GC columns increased its efficiency for metal ion speciation even at trace levels. The transfer efficiency of GC with detectors is very good in speciation; hence, precise speciation of metal ions can be carried out at lower concentrations. T. Prohaska et al. used GC coupled to a double-focusing sector field inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for speciation of arsenic of liquid and gaseous emissions from soil samples, which were equilibrated in a microcosmos experiment. The analysis of isotope dilution is an important area in speciation science that can easily be carried out by using the GC-ICP-MS assembly.
