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Updated: Oct 17, 2026

Quantification of Metal Leaching in Immobilized Metal Affinity Chromatography
Published on: January 17, 2020
Simultaneous determination and speciation of zinc, cadmium, lead, and copper in natural water with minimum handling
J Pei1, M L Tercier-Waeber, J Buffle
1CABE, Department of Inorganic, Analytical and Applied Chemistry, Science II, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Abstract:
The paper reports a new approach based on a gel-integrated Hg-plated-Ir-based microelectrode array (GIME), for measuring Cu, Pb, Cd, and Zn speciation in natural waters. This paper focuses on the quantitative discrimination between mobile and colloidal metal species (size limit of a few nanometers), for which most classical separation techniques present severe drawbacks. Previous papers have shown qualitatively that GIME combined with square wave anodic stripping voltammetry (SWASV) has the basic characteristics required to discriminate between these two fractions directly on the unperturbed sample. In addition, because of the large sensitivity provided by GIME, complexation parameters (equilibrium constants and site concentrations) can be determined in little-perturbed samples, particularly without metal addition or with small addition compared with natural concentrations. The advantages of this procedure are exemplified and the possible artifacts occurring when titrating the sample with metals, in particular intermetallic compound formation and other problems, are discussed in detail. The present paper shows that the characteristics of GIME make it a unique tool to get quantitative information on metal speciation at nanomolar or even subnanomolar levels, with only minor sample handling.
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