Analytical Chemistry in Poland

Abstract

The paper presents the main achievements of analytical chemistry in Poland on the basis of papers published mainly in the last decade. The selection is somewhat arbitrary but should show the most important directions of research. The citations generally refer to papers published in regular journals.The following topics were discussed: general aspects, chemical methods and reagents, spectrophotometry, speciation studies, atomic spectrometry, electrochemical methods, chemo-and biosensors, chromatography and related techniques.Short reviews on the history and present status of analytical chemistry have been published elsewhere 1 ' 2 and this review is intended to present the more detailed overview of the recent fields of interest, based on some selected 1203 1204 HULANICKI AND WITKIEWICZ publications from the nineties. Such selection is obviously to some extent arbitrary and this is mainly based on information sent by colleagues from various centres. It seemed, however, necessary to indicate where appropriate, the roots and earlier achievements. General aspectsGeneral methodical studies were connected with the criteria of homogeneity of chemical composition of standard substances 3 ' 4 which were later formulated by Malissa 5 and Danzer 6 . The linear regression model has been proposed for the study of homogeneity of solids 7 . As reference substances were proposed large, particularly pure, crystals 8 . Recently standards for electron spin resonance have been developed 9 " 11 . The concept of generalised matrix effects was proposed and developed 12 . A particular case was connected with the interferences in flame emission spectrometry 13 . The problem of interferences in various atomic spectrometric techniques was discussed in detail in a series of papers proposing a new method of interference elimination by standard addition and successive dilutions 14 " 17 . The generalised standard addition method and calibration procedures were proposed for a two-component potentiometric titration 18 . The same author also developed chemometric procedures for other systems 19 " 22 .The computer methodology was suggested for the study of analytical processes of high complexity. This was possible on the basis of a generalised electron balance for redox systems 23 ' 25 principally in thermodynamic systems, but also the procedure for kinetic systems has been proposed 26 . The method of potentiometric titration in acid-base systems in concentrated solutions made possible evaluation of equilibrium constants and species concentrations 27 ' 28 . A new criterion of reliability of thermodynamic data of analytical utility has been proposed on the basis of linear dependence of logarithm of the constant, activity coefficient and relative error 29 ' 30 . Modelling and optimisation of non-linear calibration procedures were also proposed 31 * 32 . Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 23:51 18 November 2014 ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY IN POLAND 1205Aspects of standard reference materials and interlaboratory comparisons were discussed i...