2-hydroxy-N'-(1-(pyridin-2-yl) ethylidene) benzohydrazide (HPEBH) is found to be a selective and sensitive reagent for the determination of Zn(II) in food, water and synthetic samples. HPEBH forms colour less complex (Zn- HPEBH) with Zn(II) in aqueous DMF at pH 5.0. Ligand shows maximum absorbance at 312 nm, whereas the complex shows maximum absorption at 351 nm. Beer’s law is obeyed in the range of 0.653-6.53 μg mL-1 of Zn(II), with a correlation coefficient 0.9996. The molar absorptivity (ε) and Sandell’s sensitivity of the complex are 6.27×104 L.mol-1.cm-1and 0.026 μg mL-1 respectively. The metal to reagent ratio 1:1 is confirmed by the Job’s and mole ratio methods. The optimized method has been successfully applied for the determination of Zn(II) in food, water and synthetic samples in the presence of diverse ions. It is also found that the obtained results are in good agreement with AAS method. Hence, the proposed method is fairly sensitive and reproducible.
