Spectrophotometric determination of microamounts of mercury(II) and sulfide ions in aqueous solution

Ammonium (2′,3′-dihydroxy pyridyl-4′-azo)benzene-4-arsonate (DHP-4A) provides a simple, rapid, and sensitive spectrophotometric microdetermination of mercury(II) in aqueous solution. The magenta colored 1:2 metal to ligand complex formed has a molecular extinction coefficient 6.25 × 10⁴ liters mol^?1 cm^?1 at the maximum absorption of 535 nm in highly alkaline medium. Beer's law is obeyed up to 3.8 ppm and Sandell's sensitivity (for an absorbance of 0.001) is 0.0032 μg of mercury(II)/cm². The mercury(II) complexed with DHP-4A has also been used in microdetermination of sulfide ions using ligand exchange reaction. The optimum concentration range of sulfide ions which can reproducibly be determined is 0.16-5.05 μg/10 ml and sensitivity of sulfide ions determination (for an absorbance 0.001) is 7.3 × 10^?4 μg/cm².