Chemical suppression of contaminant metal ions using a metastable state in precolumn derivatizing HPLC: an ultratrace fluorometric detection of Al(III).

The contamination of metal ions from reagents used frequently restricts the practical detection limit of the metal ion, which itself is a source of contamination. We have found a novel solution to this problem, a chemical-suppressing method of contaminant metal ions on a reversed-phase HPLC for Al3+ with a detection limit of 7.6 x 10(-11) mol dm(-3) (2.1 ng dm(-3)) by only adding a certain agent into all stock solutions without any preconcentration or purification steps. This technique decreases the concentration of the contaminant Al3+ originating from the reagents by more than 1 order of magnitude using selective derivatization of sample Al3+ ions to a powerful fluorescent complex at a metastable state in the precolumn chelation processes. Meanwhile, the contaminant Al3+ remains as a nonfluorescent complex with a blocking reagent in order to suppress the contamination. This selective derivatization is achieved by the accumulation of several complexation processes based on the difference of formation, dissociation, and ligand-exchange kinetics and the thermodynamics between the derivatizing reagent, the 4',5'-geometorical isomer of calcein, and the blocking reagent, o,o'-dihydroxyazobenzene. This simple and smart HPLC system was validated through recovery tests of environmental and biological samples.