Date of Award

1988

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Silvio Rodriguez

First Committee Member

Kishori Chaubal

Second Committee Member

Patrick Jones

Abstract

The present study involves the determination of traces of thallium and mercury in aqueous solution by forming ion-association complexes of these metals with rhodamine 6G (R6G) in the presence of iodide. Thallium(lll) and mercury(Il) are able to quench the fluorescence of R6G in the presence of iodide by forming ion—association complexes, and the degree of quenching correlates with the thallium(III) or mercury(II) concentrations . By using this method, the minimum amount of thallium- (III) that can be determined in aqueous solutions is approximately 4.00 X 10-6m, while the minimum amount of mercury(II) is approximately 3.00 X 10-6m. Thallium(I) cannot be determined by this method because it is not possible to form ion-association complexes under similar experimental conditions therefore, this method can be used to differentiate between Tl(I) and Tl(III) in aqueous solution. To elucidate the composition of the ion-association complexes in aqueous solutions two spectrophotometric methods are used: the mole-ratio method and the continuous- variation method. The experimental results seem to indicate that two complexes are formed for the mercury(II)-R6G-iodide system. The empirical compositions of these complexes are tentatively determined to be [(R6G)HgI3] and [(R6G)2HgI4).

Pages

210

Included in

Chemistry Commons

Share

COinS
 

Rights Statement

Rights Statement

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).