Photochemical vapor
generation (PVG) has emerged as a promising
sample introduction method for atomic spectrometry in recent years.
Despite its great success, a major impediment for the wide application
of PVG is the interferences from the coexisting ions, especially transition-metal
ions. In this work, iron and 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic (Fe-BTC),
a Fe-containing metal–organic framework (MOF) material, was
synthesized and first used as a platform integrating the sample matrix
separation, preconcentration, and photocatalysis for the highly selective
determination of elements by PVG. Bismuth was selected as a model
analyte. Fe-BTC served not only as the photocatalyst for the PVG of
Bi3+ but also as an efficient absorbent for the separation
of analytes from the sample matrix. Compared with the previous PVG
system, the performance of tolerating interferences toward coexisting
ions of the proposed method has been greatly improved after using
Fe-BTC-based matrix separation. Thus the excess of 10 mg L–1 of Co2+ and 100 mg L–1 of Cu2+, Ni2+, and Fe3+ caused no obvious interferences
for 1 μg L–1 of Bi determination. Under the
optimal conditions, the limit of detection (LOD, 3σ) of the
developed method was 0.3 ng L–1 with the inductively
coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICPMS) measurement, which
could be lowered down to 0.04 ng L–1 after ten times
of preconcentration with Fe-BTC prior to analysis. This method was
successfully applied for the analysis of Bi in complicated sample
matrices of soil (GBW07401), sediment (GBW07310), nickel–iron
alloy (GBW01622), and nickel alloys (GBW01641) by the external calibration
method.