Spectrophotometric determination of zirconium with 5,7-dibromo-8-hydroxyquinoline in presence of thiocyanate

The characteristics of the ternary complex formed between zirconium(IV) and 5,7-dibromo-8-hydroxyquinoline in presence of thiocyanate have been studied with an analytical point of view. The resulting colored species is extractable into chloroform with absorption maximum at 416 nm, which leads to the determination of the trace amounts of the metal ion. The method obeys Beer’s law in the range 0.2–9.0 μg Zr/mL having molar absorbitivity and Sandell’s sensitivity values of 1.05 × 10 4 L/mol cm and 0.0087 μg Zr/cm 2 , respectively. The ratio of zirconium(IV), 5,7-dibromo-8-hydroxyquinoline and thiocyanate in the extracted species is found to be 1: 2: 2. A large number of foreign ions do not interfere in the proposed method. The applicability of the procedure is tested by carrying out satisfactorily the analysis of a wide variety of samples.