Absolute isotope ratios defining isotope scales used in isotope ratio mass spectrometers and optical isotope instruments

Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry.

Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) is a specialized technique used to provide information about the geographic, chemical, and biological origins of substances. The ability to determine the source of an organic substance stems from the relative isotopic abundances of the elements which comprise the material. Because the isotope ratios of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and...

Cross contamination in dual inlet isotope ratio mass spectrometers

Since the early days of geochemical isotope ratio mass spectrometry there has always been the problem of cross contamination, i.e. the contamination of the sample gas with traces of reference gas (and vice versa) in a dual inlet system and the analyzer itself. This was attributable to valve leakages and could be corrected for. In modern leak-free machines this problem still influences the measu...

Isotope Effects, Isotope Separation and Isotope Fractionation

Measuring Pu Isotope Ratios with Mass Spectrometry

INTRODUCTION Anthropogenic plutonium has been introduced into the environment over the past 50 years as the result of the detonation of nuclear weapons and operational releases from the nuclear industry. In the Arctic environment, the main source of plutonium is from atmospheric weapons testing, which have resulted in a relatively uniform, underlying global distribution of plutonium. Other rele...

Calibration of isotope amount ratios by analysis of isotope mixtures.

The question as to what constitutes a fully calibrated isotope amount ratio measurement still remains a topic of active research. For years, the definitive calibration approach has been by means of synthetic mixtures of highly enriched isotopes with known chemical purity to give gravimetrically defined ratios. This article outlines the core concepts and assumptions of this method and illustrate...