Extensive usage of engineered metallic nanoparticles within electronic products has evoked a need to assess their occurrence and fate within environmental systems upon release to the environment. Release of these nanoparticles potentially can cause a co-occurrence of nano-particulate and dissolved metal pollutants. Conventional analytical techniques to detect and quantify both nano-particulate and dissolved metals within water samples usually involves time- and materials-consuming prior steps of filtration and acid digestion. In this study, a size exclusion chromatography–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry method (SEC-ICP-MS) for the rapid nanoparticle-dissolved phase separation and quantification was developed.  Separation of different size gold nano-particles (50, 20, 10 and 5 nm) and CdSe/ZnS and InP/ZnS Quantum dots from their corresponding dissolved metals was achieved using a 125-angstrom pore size SEC column with an eluent containing a surfactant to ensure nanoparticle dispersion and a complexing ligand (ethylenediaminetetraacetate) to prevent metal cation sorption to the column. Analytical operating conditions and performance evaluation for SEC-ICP-MS method will be presented. The applicability of the SEC-ICP-MS method to environmental systems was verified by measuring quantum dots and dissolved metals added to samples of waters with different conditions as well as natural samples. The method was also applied to monitoring CdSe/ZnS dissolution kinetics in an urban river water. The SEC-ICP-MS developed here may offer improved automation for characterizing heterogeneous suspensions containing &gt;1 µg L<sup>–1</sup> heavy metals.<br/>

Quantification of dissolved and nanoparticulate metals with SEC-ICP-MS

256th National Meeting (2018)

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