Abstract

Methyllithium was used as a chemical modifier for the electrothermal vaporisation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric determination of inorganic tellurium. Following the placing of an aliquot quantity of the aqueous sample solution into a small exchangeable cuvette and application of a drying process to expel all the water, the resulting residue containing inorganic tellurium was reacted with the methyllithium. Electrical heating of the furnace stimulated the release of the volatile methyltellurium species, permitting the complete separation of the analyte from not only the matrix but also the methylating agent itself. As the result, the quantitative generation and introduction of the analyte tellurium could be achieved. Although the volatile species was too insubstantial and too momentary to identify, it was presumed to be dimethyltellurium. The detection limit was estimated to be 0.12 pg of tellurium, which corresponds to 1.2 pg mL⁻¹ of the tellurium concentration when a sample injection volume of 100 µL is applied. The relative standard deviation for 10 replicates of standards each containing 20 pg of tellurium(IV) was calculated to be 2.0%.