Determination of ultra-trace amounts of uranium by ICP-AES technique

An atomic emission spectrometric method based on the use of Inductively coupled argon plasma source has been developed for the determination of ultra trace concentrations of uranium in aqueous solutions. Using the optimized experimental conditions for the ICP source, uranium can be determined at 0.05 μg/ml concentration in 0.3M HNO3 solutions with either of the two analytical lines viz. 3859.6 A0 or 4090.1 A0. The precision of determinations at the lowest detection limit is better than 2% R.S.D. The uranium estimation has been corrected for the interference due to the presence of eighteen metallic elements using an inter-element correction procedure. A number of spiked samples and NBL reference samples with concomitant impurities have been analysed using the standardised procedure and good agreement has been observed with their certified values