Accurate and Rapid Determination of 99Tc in Seawater Samples Using Triple-quadrupole ICP-MS with C2H4-He Mode
Author:
Affiliation:

Fund Project:

undefined

  • Article
  • |
  • Figures
  • |
  • Metrics
  • |
  • Reference
  • |
  • Related
  • |
  • Cited by
  • |
  • Materials
    Abstract:

    Accurate and rapid monitoring of 99Tc is crucial for the radiological risk assessment in nuclear emergency situations. However, accurate determination of 99Tc by ICP-MS is always hindered by the interferences of 98Mo and 99Ru. In this work, a rapid and accurate analytical method of 99Tc in seawater samples was established, and 185Re as a non-isotopic tracer was used for the monitoring of 99Tc yield in the whole procedure. TiCl3 was chosen as a reducing agent and co-precipitant for the 99Tc preconcentration. 98Mo and 99Ru were effectively removed using two TK200 resin columns under novel alkaline loading conditions, and the excellent decontamination factors (DFs) of 4.28 × 106 for Mo and 5.16 × 105 for Ru were achieved. Importantly, the interferences of 98Mo+ tailing, 99Ru+ and 98Mo1H+ can be efficiently suppressed using C2H4 as a new reaction gas for 99Tc measurement, and 98Mo1H+/98Mo+ of 1.31 × 10?7 was achieved at 0.28 mL/min C2H4-1.0 mL/min He. The overall decontamination factor of Ru reached 3.76 × 107, which are at least 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of the conventional methods. The detection limit of 3.18 pg/L (2.00 mBq/L) was obtained with a whole analytical time of 4 hours for 12 samples, which was suitable for the application of nuclear emergency. More importantly, this correction-free alternative method was found to accurately measure 99Tc by ICP-MS without any mathematical correction of 99Ru for the first time.

    Reference
    Related
    Cited by
Get Citation

Jie Chen, Yiman Lu, Zongjie Xie, Zhilong Yang, Man Wang, Hao Wang, Jing Lin, Shan Xing*. Accurate and Rapid Determination of 99Tc in Seawater Samples Using Triple-quadrupole ICP-MS with C2H4-He Mode[J]. Atomic Spectroscopy,2026,47(4):507-514.

Copy
Share
Article Metrics
  • Abstract:
  • PDF:
  • HTML:
  • Cited by:
History
  • Received:
  • Revised:
  • Adopted:
  • Online: August 14,2026
  • Published:
Copyright © 2026 Atomic Spectroscopy Press Ltd All rights reserved
Supported by:Beijing E-Tiller Technology Development Co., Ltd.