Highly sensitive gas-diffusion sequential injection analysis based on flow manipulation

The present paper describes approaches utilizing the powerful flow manipulation capabilities of sequential injection analysis (SIA) to substantially improve the efficiency of gas-diffusion separation compared to its traditional implementation in flow injection analysis (FIA). Ammonia, ethylamine, diethylamine and triethylamine were used as model analytes in this study. Eleven flow manipulation approaches involving continuous flow, stop-flow, oscillating flow, and the introduction of air bubbles to separate the sample zone from the donor solution were tested. Improvement in sensitivity compared to traditional gas-diffusion FIA exceeding one order of magnitude was achieved. It was observed that this improvement increased with the molecular size of the analyte.