An ion chromatographic method for the purity analysis of the poorly soluble energetic coordination compound lead NTOate

An ion chromatography (IC) method was developed for the purity determination of the poorly soluble energetic coordination compound lead NTOate (lead(ii) salt of 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one). To overcome the limitations of conventional ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) titration and chromatographic approaches, a simple pretreatment strategy was established in which a trace amount of acetic acid was introduced to facilitate dissolution of lead NTOate, enabling subsequent determination of the NTO²⁻ ligand anion by IC. Under the optimized conditions, the method exhibited a linear range of 0.5–100 mg L⁻¹ with excellent linearity (R² = 0.9996), together with low detection limits and satisfactory accuracy, precision and repeatability. The purity results obtained for production samples were consistent with those determined by EDTA titration while avoiding its complex operational procedures. The proposed IC method enables rapid and reliable purity determination in a single measurement and provides an effective analytical approach for the quality evaluation of lead NTOate and related energetic coordination compounds.