Development of Suspended Droplet Microextraction Method for Spectrophotometric Determination of Serum Iron

The study introduces a new suspended droplet microextraction (SDME) method for spectrophotometric determination of serum iron (Fe3+), offering advantages such as simplicity, low cost, and high sensitivity. The method involves forming a red-colored ferric thiocyanate complex, which is extracted into octanol and measured at 505 nm. It demonstrates high recovery rates (96.2%-98.8%), low relative standard deviation (1.2%-5.0%), and a detection limit of 2.4 ng/mL for iron concentrations between 20-1000 ng/mL. The method's accuracy aligns with electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry, making it a reliable alternative for clinical serum analysis, particularly in resource-constrained settings.