ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the speciation strategy for metal ions in environmental and biological samples by using Ion Chromatography (IC) and its related modalities. IC has been used widely for the analysis of all inorganic and organic metal ions, including ionized species. The combination of IC with advanced detectors in the technique is similar to reversed-phase-high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). As in the case of RP-HPLC, detection in IC can be carried out by both nonelement- and element-specific detectors. The nonelement-specific detectors are ultraviolet/visible, fluorescent, electrochemical, conductometric, and radiometric, while element-specific detectors include atomic absorption spectrometry, atomic emission spectrometry, and inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry. The element-specific detectors have been used frequently for detection purposes in IC. The most important experimental conditions are the purity of the gas, flow of gas, temperature of the detector, and concentration of the reducing agents, as in a hydride generation unit.
