Crown Ether-Fluorene as Solid Phase Extraction Sorbent : Synthesis, characterization, and Application

The link between heavy metals and human health is of increasing concern. The toxicity of some silver compounds can cause serious effects on animals and humans by migrating through the food chain and accumulating in organisms.Silver is also used widely in industries, medicine and commerce and silver wastes can enter the environment. The contact of silver ions has been reported to form complexation with Vitamins E and B, thus modifying their efficiency. The development of analytical methods for the determination of silver has gained lots of attention to insure effective monitoring in the environment. Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a usefull separation and preconcentration technique with key advantages such as simplicity, flexibility, rapid, higher enrichment factors, the absence of emulsion, lower costs and minimum consumption of reagents. The SPE method has been successfully used for the preconcentration and separation of heavy metal ions.