A Simple Sensitive Spectrophotometric Method for the Determination of Ce4+ Using Variamine Blue as a Chromogenic Reagent

A rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of trace amounts of cerium using Variamine Blue (VB) as a chromogenic reagent. The proposed method is based on the reaction of cerium with potassium iodide in acidic medium to liberate iodine, which oxidizes Variamine Blue to give a violet colored species with an absorption maximum at 560nm. Beers law was obeyed in the range 2–10µg mL^–1 of cerium. The molar absorptivity and Sandells sensitivity are found to be 1.65×10⁴L mol^–1cm^–1 and 8.48×10^–3µgcm^–2, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of cerium in alloy and synthetic mixtures.