L-Cysteine Functionalized Silica Gel as an Efficient Adsorbent for the Determination of Heavy Metals in Foods by ICP-MS

A novel l-cysteine functionalized silica gel adsorbent (SG-Cys) was successfully synthesized and characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra and elemental analysis. An efficient method for simultaneous determination of heavy metals [V (V), Cr (VI), Cu (II), As (V), Cd (II), and Pb (II)] was developed by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) coupled with pre-concentration with the prepared SG-Cys adsorbent. The experimental parameters, including the solution pH, sample flow rate, eluent volume, eluent type, and concentration, have been systematically optimized to obtain higher enrichment factors of target ions. Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors of V (V), Cr (VI), Cu (II), As (V), Cd (II), and Pb (II) reached 123, 100, 86, 106, 97, and 94, respectively, and the detection limits were as low as 1.8-3.7 ng L-1. The proposed method has been applied to the determination of trace heavy metals in water, rice, wheat, corn, and tea samples, which exhibited a satisfactory recovery in the range of 90.6-106.0 %.