Quantitative colorimetric-imaging analysis of nickel in iron meteorites.

A quantitative analytical imaging approach for determining the nickel content of metallic meteorites is proposed. The approach uses a digital image of a series of standard solutions of the nickel-dimethylglyoxime coloured chelate and a meteorite sample solution subjected to the same treatment as the nickel standards for quantitation. The image is processed with suitable software to assign a colour-dependent numerical value (analytical signal) to each standard. Such a value is directly proportional to the analyte concentration, which facilitates construction of a calibration graph where the value for the unknown sample can be interpolated to calculate the nickel content of the meteorite. The…