Silicon speciation by hyphenated techniques for environmental, biological and industrial issues: A review

Abstract

Silicon speciation in environmental, biological and industrial matrices is of considerable importance due to its wide use in many consumer and personal care products and industry. In addition, the entry of silicones in various compartments like wastes, soils, air and water highlights the need to perform exposure studies, toxicological surveys and to measure negative effects. Due to possible contamination and trace level presence of silicon compounds, challenges to determination, identification and quantification are presented. The principal species of concern include siloxanes, silanols, silanediols and silanes. State of the art of analytical methods for total silicon determination and silicon speciation are established. Atomic spectroscopic methods are mainly used to measure total Si at trace concentration levels. On the opposite, hyphenated techniques are performed for Si speciation. Particular attention is paid to chromatographic methods coupled to sensitive and selective detectors (MS, AED and ICP) allowing structural information. Liquid and gas chromatography emerge as the most widespread separation techniques. However, other procedures such as MS, NMR, IR and XRF enable a better knowledge of these species. The potential and limitations of hyphenated techniques are highlighted, particularly concerning sensitivity and selectivity. Furthermore, potential sources of contamination and analytical artifacts in silicon determination are reviewed.

Forensic Analysis of Human Autopsy Tissue for the Presence of Polydimethylsiloxane (Silicone) and Volatile Cyclic Siloxanes using Macro FT‐IR, FT‐IR Spectroscopic Imaging and Headspace GC‐MS

“…a–d , respectively. Although the molecular ion for each VCS was not detected because siloxanes lose a methyl group upon electron ionization , fragmentation patterns for the VCSs detected in the tissue were consistent with those of the corresponding reference standards.…”

Sample Pre-treatment Methods for Organometallic Species Determination

“…Interest in LC for element speciation in soil, sediments and environmental samples has increased in recent decades. A number of reviews have been published describing the benefi ts associated with using element-specifi c detectors for LC (Guerin et al 1999, Harrington 2000, Szpunar et al 2000, González-Toledo et al 2003, Montes-Bayon et al 2003, B'Hymer and Caruso 2004, 2006, Miravet et al 2010, Popp et al 2010, Chainet et al 2011. It is important to mention that LC could be easily coupled to some element-specifi c detectors without signifi cant changes to the original instruments (González-Toledo et al 2003).…”

Atomic spectrometry update. Industrial analysis: metals, chemicals and advanced materials

“…123 Of particular note was a very useful section on contamination and analytical artefacts, which present major challenges in the determination of Si. An excellent and very useful review (with 203 refs) of the analysis of total Si and the speciation of Si by hyphenated techniques for environmental, biological and industrial issues, was presented by Chainet and co-workers.…”