Flow-injection spectrophotometric determination of arylamines and sulphonamides by diazotization and coupling in a micellar medium

Abstract In a sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) micellar solution, the rate of coupling of a diazonium ion with N-(1- naphthyl)ethylenediamine (NED) increases greatly, the protonation of the resulting azo dyes takes place at higher pH values and the dyes are more soluble. These favourable features were applied to the development of a simple flow-injection spectrophotometric procedure for the determination of diazotizable substances of pharmaceutical interest. Limits of detection in the range 0.2–0.5 μg ml−1 (signal-to-noise ratio=3), with relative standard deviation of 0.7–3% (n=3) for 5 μg ml−1 standards, were obtained.