An analytical method for determination of fullerenes and functionalized fullerenes in soils with high performance liquid chromatography and UV detection

Fullerenes are carbon-based nanomaterials expected to play a major role in emerging nanotechnology and produced at an increasing rate for industrial and household applications. In the last decade a number of novel compounds (i.e. fullerene derivatives) is being introduced into the market and specific analytical methods are needed for analytical purposes as well as environmental and safety issues. In the present work eight fullerenes (C60 and C70) and functionalized fullerenes (C60 and C70 exohedral-derivatives) were selected and a novel liquid chromatographic method was developed for their analysis with UV absorption as a method of detection. The resulting HPLC-UV method is the first one suitable for the analysis of all eight compounds. This method was applied for the analysis of fullerenes added to clayish, sandy and loess top-soils at concentrations of 20, 10 and 5 μg kg(-1) and extracted with a combination of sonication and shaking extraction. The analytical method limits of detection (LoD) and limits of quantification (LoQ) were in the range of 6-10 μg L(-1) and 15-24 μg L(-1) respectively for the analytical solutions. The extraction from soil was highly reproducible with recoveries ranging from 47±5 to 71±4% whereas LoD and LoQ for all soils tested were of 3 μg kg(-1) and 10 μg kg(-1) respectively. No significant difference in the extraction performance was observed depending of the different soil matrices and between the different concentrations. The developed method can be applied for the study of the fate and toxicity of fullerenes in complex matrices at relatively low concentrations and in principle it will be suitable for the analysis of other types of functionalized fullerenes that were not included in this work.