Automatic flow kinetic-catalytic methods

Kinetic-catalytic analytical methods are simple and highly sensitive strategies for chemical analysis, that rely on simple instrumentation. For that reason, they have been implemented to the quantification of a large number of chemical species such as transition metals, non-metallic anions and organic compounds. Flow techniques are presented as an efficient tool to overcome the main limitations of the kinetic-catalytic methods. Solving problems related with sample handling, the reproducible data acquisition, reproducible temperature control and the implementation of different kinetic determination methods (initial rate, fixed time and fixed measure). Herein we review the recent applications of novel approaches to perform fully automated kinetic-catalytic methods based on computer controlled flow techniques. We also describe new devices and materials such as chip-based flow injection analyzers and the use of nanoparticles to improve the performance of this class of analytical methodologies.