Deuterium/hydrogen microscopy in astrogeological material using an elastic recoil approach

Abstract

A new experimental setup for quantitative hydrogen isotopic-ratio microscopy in thin samples (up to 12μm) is under development at the Lund Ion Beam Analysis Facility. This technique is derived from the proton–proton scattering technique and has been proven to have the same beneficial features, namely a detection limit below 1wt-ppm and a depth resolution better than 1μm. The method gives absolute quantitative information about H or D content in atoms per cm2 and does not depend on the structure, chemical environment or other so called “matrix effects”. This work presents an evaluation of the developed technique through measurements on unique material from samples from the Tagish Lake meteorite, which has been suggested to be one of the most primitive solar system materials yet studied. We discuss the capabilities of the technique through the results from measurements on a geological standard.