Determination of nickel in active pharmaceutical ingredients by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

An electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometric procedure for the determination of nickel in active pharmaceutical ingredients was developed. Since the recoveries of nickel by the direct dissolution of samples in diluted nitric acid were low and caused errors in the determination of Ni in pharmaceutical samples, different approaches for sample pre-treatment were examined. It was found that the microwave digestion was the most suitable way for sample preparation. Various combinations of digestion agents and different microwave conditions were tested. The combination of nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide was found to be the most appropriate. The validity of the method was evaluated by recovery studies of spiked samples and by the comparison of the results obtained by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The recovery ranged from 87.5 to 104.0% and a good agreement was achieved between both methods. The detection limit and the limit of quantification were 0.6 and 2.1 µg g-1 respectively. The precision of the method was confirmed by the determination of Ni in the spiked samples and was below 4%, expressed in terms of a relative standard deviation. The method was applied to the determination of nickel in production samples of active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates.