Preparation and application of Fe3O4@ SiO2@ poly (o-phenylenediamine) nanoparticles as a novel magnetic sorbent for the solid-phase extraction of tellurium in water samples and its determination by ET-AAS

A novel magnetic polymer (Fe3O4@ SiO2@ PoPD) is synthesized for the magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) of tellurium from water samples and its determination by electrothermal atomic absorption spectroscopy (ETAAS). The morphology, composition and magnetic properties of the synthesized nanoparticles are characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and vibrating sample magnetometery (VSM). The factors affecting separation and preconcentration of tellurium including the amount of sorbent, composition of sorbent material, extraction time and temperature, desorption time and temperature, pH and ionic strength of the sample solution, desorption solvent type, concentration and volume are studied. Under optimized experimental condition, the linear range and the detection limit of the method are 0.08?1.9 ng mL-1 (R2 = 0.9879) and 0.05 ng mL-1, respectively. The percent recovery of tellurium from real samples spiked at 0.5 ng mL-1 is more than 98%. The intraday and interday relative standard deviations for a batch of the sorbent at above concentration level are 4.3 and 5.6%, respectively. The sorbent-to-sorbent RSD% is 8.9%. Finally, the developed method is successfully applied to the analysis of tellurium in some real samples.

Automated summary

A novel magnetic polymer was synthesized for the extraction and determination of tellurium from water samples, with detailed characterization and optimization experiments conducted. The method showed a wide linear range, low detection limit, and high recovery rate for tellurium in real samples.