title: Evaluation of selenium behavior in thermospray flame furnace atomic absorption spectrometry.
abstract: The behavior of selenium in thermospray flame furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (TS-FF-AAS) was studied and the developed procedure was applied for selenium determination in biological materials after microwave-assisted sample digestion. A sample volume of 600muL was introduced into the hot metallic Ni tube at a flow rate of 0.4mLmin(-1) using water as carrier. The limit of detection obtained for Se was 8.7mugL(-1) (3s(blank)/slope, n=10), which is 95-fold better than that typically obtained using FAAS. The applicability of the TS-FF-AAS procedure was evaluated for selenium determination in biological materials. Certified reference materials of pig kidney (BCR 186) and mussel (GBW 08571) were analyzed and a t-test had not shown any statistically significant difference at a 95% confidence level between determined and certified values for both materials. The procedure was successfully applied for determination of Se in pig kidney and shellfish. It was demonstrated that TS-FF-AAS improved the performance of FAAS (flame atomic absorption spectrometry) for determination of Se.
authors.affiliation: Grupo de Análise Instrumental Aplicada, Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, P.O. Box 676, 13560-970 São Carlos, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Fabiana
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rosini
authors.forename: Clésia C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Nascentes
authors.forename: José Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Neira
authors.forename: Joaquim A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Nóbrega