Determination of Selenium in Thirty-Two Geochemical Reference Materials by Continuous - Flow Hydride Generation Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry

A continuous-flow hydride atomic absorption spectrophotometric method has been applied to 32 geochemical reference materials for the determination of selenium. The sample is decomposed with a mixture of nitric, perchloric and hydrofluoric acids. Selenium values obtained in this study are in general agreement with literature values and provide additional certification for these reference materials. The precision of the method is generally better than 5% relative standard deviation. The lower limit of determination of selenium in the sample is 12 ppb.