Determination of antimony in steel by hydride generation and by electrothermal zeeman atomic absorption spectrometry

Procedures are described for the determination of antimony in steel. Samples by decomposed with a nitric/perchloric acid mixture and antimony is determined either by a.a.s. after hydride generation with sodium tetrahydroborate or by graphite-furnace a.a.s. with Zeeman background correction. Some reference steel samples were analyzed by both methods and by instrumental neutron activation. The results obtained (45–680 μg g^?1 antimony) were in very good agreement; detection limits were about 3 μg g^?1. The relative standard deviation for samples with > 50 μg g^?1 antimony was 〈 5%.