Clinical research (1-5) has established that neoplastic sarcomas and certain categories of carcinoma (lung, breast, colon, etc.) (6) exhibit a pronounced tendency to sequester serum gallium citrate and other gallium salts. The metal's therapeutic effectiveness in regressing or arresting malignant growth-either as absorbed nonradiogallium ( 6 ) or as (principally) the 67 isotope used for in situ radiotherapy (2)-has prompted exploration of new benchtop analytical procedures ( 7 ) for the measurement of trace Ga which might speed up tissue assay efforts and aid in the eventual identification of the responsible biochemical mechanism.Were it not for the classically severe kinetic complications which are associated with the aqueous gallium electrode reaction (GER) (8)(9)(10)(11)(12), the electroanalysis of Ga(II1) a t trace and ultratrace concentration levels could be readily accomplished using a variety of acidified supporting electrolyte media. As described (10-14) in several earlier studies, the chemical composition of the electrolyte can play a catalytic role in moderating the actual charge transfer rate. For example, it has been found (IO) that a kinetically fast (Le., Nernstian) gallium electrode process is attainable a t the dropping mercury electrode (DME) if the supporting electrolyte is adjusted to satisfy two criteria simultaneously: 1) the presence of an inert salt at a very high ionic strength ( J ) ; and 2) the incorporation of >0.1 M SCN-(12) or NB-(13) (halides are also marginally effective a t extremely high J values of 1 1 3 M ( I d ) ] . A supporting electrolyte comprised of acidified NaSCN/G.OM NaC104 was successfully employed in three recent investigations in which trace levels of gallium, including gallium in ashed tissue, were measured by ac phase-selective anodic stripping (PSAS) procedures (15-177, and Demerie et al. employed essentially the same media as the basis for their pulse polarographic analysis of gallium in samples of gallium arsenide semiconductors (18). However, binary electrolytes of the above types-which to our knowledge are the only ones known so far to produce room temperature GER reversibility-can pose a variety of practical analytical difficulties ( 1 9 ) , due to the densely concentrated salts required, problems that could be substantially alleviated by discovery of milder electrolyte conditions. We wish to report in this note evidence that the degree of kinetic reversibility of the gallium electrode process exhibits a pronounced reciprocal dependence on ionic strength and temperature. Results obtained from single sweep alternating current phase-selective polarograms (PSP) show that a simple 30-OC increment in reaction temperature removes the historical necessity for densely concentrated inert salts and enables one to obtain a Nernstian voltammetric current readout from acidified NaSCN alone a t the 1.0-molar level (J = l), and an analytically useful peak in 0.1M NaSCN.
EXPERIMENTALApparatus and Reagents. The apparatus and reagents used to obtain the phase-selective polarogr...