Development of a capillary electrophoretic method for the separation and determination of trace inorganic and organomercury species utilizing the formation of highly absorbing water soluble dithizone sulphonate complexes

This paper details results which show that rapid, good quality separations can be achieved for inorganic and organomercury species as their dithizone sulphonate complexes, using coated capillary columns. The complexes were pre-formed before injection and detection was by direct measurement of the absorbance of the complexes. Good linear calibration curves were obtained for all the mercury species studied and the exceptionally low background noise and straight base lines meant that detection limits in the low mu g l(-1) range could be obtained.