Simultaneous determination of species-specific isotopic composition of Hg by gas chromatography coupled to multicollector ICPMS.

This work presents the simultaneous online determination of the isotopic composition of different Hg species in a single sample by the hyphenation of gas chromatography (GC) with multicollector-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS). With the use of commercially available instrumentation, precise and accurate species-specific Hg isotope delta values (per mil deviation of the Hg isotope ratio in the sample relative to a reference standard) have been obtained online from consecutive GC transient signals. The use of isothermal temperature programs to extend the elution of the Hg species, the proper selection of the peak integration window, as well as the preconcentration of real samples are critical to provide optimal counting statistics. Also, isotope ratio drift during transient signal elution was overcome by introducing a mixed Hg(II) and MeHg standard bracketing scheme and expressing all results using the delta-notation relative to SRM NIST-3133. Using the proposed methodology, we have obtained an external 2SD precision of 0.56 per thousand for delta (202)Hg that is more than 10 times smaller than the overall Hg stable isotope variation thus far observed in terrestrial samples. The measurement of species-specific Hg isotopic composition relative to SRM NIST-3133 has been validated versus two other analytical techniques, i.e., conventional nebulization (CN) of Hg(II) solution and cold vapor (CV) generation of Hg (0) vapor. A good agreement between the species-specific delta values obtained by the different techniques has been obtained in secondary fractionated reference standard (UM-Almaden) and environmental matrixes, i.e., BCR-CRM 464 (tuna fish) and IAEA-085 (human hair). The results show mass-dependent and mass-independent fractionation in environmental samples, i.e., mass-independent fractionation of odd isotopes (199)Hg and (201)Hg in tuna fish was observed. This methodology provides new possibilities for the future study of species-specific stable isotope geochemistry of Hg and other trace metals.