Dimercaptomaleonitrile (maleonitriledithiol, H
2 mnt or H
2L) reacts with cobalt to form a water soluble stable complex, CoL
33-, at pH 4.5 to 11.4, which has an absorption maximum at 288 nm with a molar absorptivity of 5.59×10
4 l/mol cm. The charge of the complex was estimated to be 3- by extracting the complex into chloroform with tetra-
n-hexylammonium iodide (tha
+I
-) as an ion association complex, (3tha
+, CoL
33-). Although the free ligand is easily oxidized in air, zinc(II) ion stabilizes it by forming, at pH 2.2 to 9.5, water soluble stable complex, ZnL
22-, which reacts with cobalt to give CoL
33- complex quantitatively. The difference of the absorptivity between CoL
33- and ZnL
22- at 288 nm (Δε
288nm=5.0×10
4l/mol cm) is large enough to make possible the spectrophotometric determination of cobalt. Under the condition of the recommened procedure, the metal exchange reaction proceeded quantitatively within 2 minutes and absorbance was effectively constant for 45 minutes. Beer's law was confirmed in a range of 022 μg Co
2+/ 25 ml and the sensitivity for absorbance=0.001 was 1.2×10
-3 μg Co
2+/cm
2. Among 15 metal ions studied, nickel, iron and copper seriously interfered with the determination. However, nickel and cobalt can be determined simultaneously based on the difference in absorption spectra of their mnt complexes.
Our recommended procedure is as follows; take the sample solution containing less than 22 μg of cobalt(II) in a 25 ml volumetric flask. Add 5 ml of 7.5×10
-4 M ZnL
22- solution and 0.1 M hexamine-HCl buffer (pH 5.1) and dilute to the mark with water. Measure the absorbance at 288 nm (in the presence of nickel, also at 312 nm) against the reagent blank within 45 minutes.
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