Silver has long been an important metal in commerce. It is valued for its resistance to corrosion and for its use in alloys, medicine and jewelry. 1 The recovery of silver from waste solutions has commercial importance, and improved methods for accomplaced this, are of interest. Recent information about the interaction of silver with essential nutrients, especially Se, Cu, vitamin E and vitamine B12, have focused attention on its potential toxicity. 2,3 Improved means of lowering silver concentrations are needed, since the acceptable level, 10 ng/dm 3 , is exceeded in many culinary water supplies. The analysis of Ag + ions at low concentration in the presence of other cations at high concentration, requires very sensitive techniques.The most common methods for the determination of silver ion are flame and furnace atomic absorption spectrometry, 4 spectrophotometry, 5 stripping voltammetry and potentiometry. 6 Unfortunately, their sensitivity is usually insufficient for the low concentrations in environmental samples.Consequently, a preconcentration and matrix elimination step is usually required. The most widely used techniques for the separation, preconcentration of trace amounts of silver are liquid-liquid extraction, 7 coprecipitation with tellurium, 8,9 absorption of silver on powdered dithizone, 10 and rhodamine, 11 ion exchange resin, 12 fire assay with platinum metal in the presence of cuprous sulfide as collector 13 and solid phase extraction (SPE). 14 The solid-phase extraction techniques reduce solvent usage and exposure, disposal cost, and the extraction time for sample preparation. 15 Recently, octadecyl-bonded silica SPE disks have been utilized for the extraction and analysis of many different organic and environmental matrices. [16][17][18][19] Moreover, SPE disks modified by suitable ligands have been successfully used for the separation and sensitive determination of metal ions. [20][21][22] There are several literature reports dealing with the preconcentration of silver ions based on SPE, most of which employ chelating groups bound to resins or other polymeric supports; these include 2-mercaptobenzothiazolyl on poly(acrylonitrile) fibers, diethyldithiocarbamate on activated carbon and sulfhydryl on cotton microcolumns. [23][24][25] However, to the best of our knowledge, there is only one report on the use of modified octadecylsilica membrane disks for the separation and preconcentration of Ag + with a detection limit of 50 ng/dm 3 . 14 In this work, a simple and reliable method for the rapid extraction and determination of ultra-trace amounts of Ag + ions using an octadecyl-bonded silica membrane disk modified with tetramethyl tetrathia fulvalen (TMTTF) and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry is presented.
Experimental
ReagentsAcetic acid, nitric acid, sodium thiosulfate and high-purity of methanol (all from Merck) were used as received. Analyticalgrade silver nitrate and other salts (all from Merck) were of the highest purity available, and were dried in a vacuum over P2O5. A simpl...