Document Abstract
A simple spectrophotometric method is proposed for the rapid determination of mercury(II).
The procedure is based on the hydrolysis of iodine in the presence of Hg(II), resulting in the formation of
hypoiodous acid, which selectively oxidizes leucocrystal violet to crystal violet. The obtained violet dye
shows maximum absorbance at 590 nm. Beer’s law was valid in the concentration range of 0-1.0 μg mL-1. The
effects of different parameters, i.e., pH, time, temperature were studied. The molar absorptivity for the system
was 1.49×105 L mol-1 cm-1. The detection limit and the quantification limit were 2.6×10-3 μg mL-1 and
0.8×10-2 μg mL-1, respectively. The proposed method is simple, selective and was successfully applied for the
determination of mercury(II) in several water samples.