Chlorophosphonazo-m-NO2, a new reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of cerium sub-group rare earth elements in the presence of yttrium sub-group elements

The synthesis of chlorophosphonazo-m-NO₂ is described. Cerium sub-group rare earth elements can be determined in the presence of 10–40 fold amounts of yttrium sub-group elements when the latter are masked by oxalic acid at pH 1.6. Under the experimental conditions employed, the apparent molar absorptivities of lanthanum and cerium at 666 nm are 9.5 × 10⁴ and 9.3 × 10⁴ l mol^-1 cm^-1, respectively. Beer's law is obeyed for 0–12 μg of lanthanum or cerium in 25 ml of solution. The coefficients of variation for La and Ce are 0.37% and 0.92%, respectively.