Since osmium is usually present in such materials at low concentration, methods with reasonable or high detectability are required. In addition, osmium is usually present in association with other platinum metals such as Pt, Rh, Ir and Pd; methods are therefore also required to have high selectivity. Various methods have been described for the determination of osmium in different samples including spectrophotometric methods 1-5 , potentiometric 6 , atomic spectrometric methods 7-9 and catalytic spectrophotometric methods.10-15 The poor selectivity or limit of detection of many existing techniques, along with the drawback of requiring a reagent that is not commercially available, has necessitated the development of adequate separation procedures.Voltammetric techniques also have been used for the determination of osmium. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] used an extraction-voltammetric method for the determination of osmium, with the limit of detection of 0.013 mg/ml osmium. Medyantseva et al. 20 determined osmium by an extraction-Ac polarographic method at 6.1×10 -7 M Os(VIII). Medyantseva et al. 21 used hydrogen catalytic currents in a solution containing osmium with nitrogen and sulfur-containing ligand, with the limit of detection of 1×10 -8 M. A more recent voltammetric method for the determination of osmium is based on its catalytic effect on the iodate oxidation of As(III) in acidic media with oscillopolarographic method. 22 The limit of detection is 0.02 ng/ml osmium. This method is not selective and has much interference. This paper presents a highly sensitive, simple and selective method for the determination of osmium, based on the cathodic catalytic current of Os(VIII)-bromate system near -0.05 V vs. Ag/AgCl reference electrode by linear sweep voltammetric (LSV) and square wave voltammetric (SWV) techniques. The main advantages of the method are sensitivity, relative selectivity, and use of only readily available reagents. The effect of possible interferences is easily removed by a single extraction of osmium into methyl isobutyl ketone. 9 Osmium is then back-extracted into sodium hydroxide solution 12 and is measured according to the recommended procedure.
Experimental
ApparatusA Polarographic Analyzer system (EG & G Princeton Applied Research), Model 384B with a three-electrode system, Model 303A (HMDE as a working electrode with area of 1.8 mm 2 , Ag/AgCl, saturated with KCl, as a reference electrode and Pt-electrode as auxiliary electrode) were used. A Model DMP-40 series digital plotter (Houston instrument) was used for recording voltammogram.
ReagentsAll chemicals used were of analytical grade and were used without further purification. Doubly distilled water was used for the experiment.A 0.450 mol/l sodium bromate solution was prepared by dissolving 16.988 g of NaBrO 3 (Merck) in water in a 250-ml volumetric flask.Osmium tetroxide stock solution was prepared by dissolving 1.0 g of osmium tetroxide from a sealed Highly sensitive catalytic waves of OsO4-bromate linear sweep voltammetric and square w...