Separation and detection of three aryltins by capillary electrophoresis-UV/VIS diode array

The trialkyltins and triphenyltins have widespread application as fungicides, antifouling coatings for porous surfaces, herbicides, insecticides, and generic biocides. Due to the varied toxicity of each species of organotins, it is important that methods address the speciation of the organotins. Traditional methods call for the hydrolysis and subsequent derivatization of the organotins before analysis. These methods can be time consuming, derivatization can be incomplete, and high levels of background interference produce difficulties in identification and quantitation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) current methods do not address the speciation of organotins; instead they only analyze for total tin. It is important, because of the differing levels of toxicity of the various congeners of organotins, to speciate them from each other and inorganic tin. The research reported in this paper addresses the use of CE with UV/VIS diode-array detection to separate and detect three phenyltins (i.e., tri-, di-, and mono-), without the need to either derivatize or complex them.