Browsing by Author "Sah, R. N."

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Boron Determination in Biological Materials by Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission and Mass Spectrometry: Effects of Sample Dissolution Methods
    (Springer Link, 1997) Nyomora, Agnes M. S.; Sah, R. N.; Brown, Patrick H.; Miller, R. O.
    This study compares four sample dissolution methods for Boron determination in two National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) botanical Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) and three Agriculture Canada/NIST RMs, each having a reference (certified or best estimate) B concentration. The dissolution treatments consisted of: 1) dry ashing at 500° C, 2) wet digestion with HNO3 + H2O2, 3) extraction with hot HNO3 and 4) closed vessel microwave dissolution. The samples were spiked before and after imposing dissolution treatments to study B recovery by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric (ICP-MS) analysis. Microwave digests of NIST SRM 1515 and some in-house RMs were also used to compare the B values of ICP-MS and ICP-AES (atomic emission spectrometry). While all three digestion methods (dry ashing, wet ashing and microwave) dissolved botanical samples, only the microwave method worked well for animal tissues. In terms of B values in these materials, there was no significant difference among the three digestion treatments. Near 100% recovery of B spiked before and after the sample dissolution indicates that there may not be a significant loss of B during the dissolution process used in this study. Extraction with hot HNO3 was as effective as the three digestion treatments, and B values for this method agreed well with reference values. For the botanical materials studied, the B values determined by ICP-AES were not significantly different from ICP-MS values. This study shows that a simple, time and labor efficient hot HNO3 extraction is as effective as other digestion/dissolution methods for quantitative B recovery from biological materials.