Abstract
A novel 76Se–78Se double spike allows for rapid and precise selenium isotope measurements in geological samples.
Highlights
Recent progress in plasma source multi-collector mass spectrometry in the last decades have enabled the development of the techniques for the measurement of previously unexplored isotope systems, the so-called “non-traditional” elements, including magnesium, iron, titanium, molybdenum, chromium and selenium[1,2,3,4,5,6]
In order to do this we modelled optimum spike compositions and spike-sample proportions for Se stable isotope measurements using the approach outlined by Millet and Dauphas in 20142, which takes into account the errors associated with counting statistics and collector Johnson noise
We found that using a background on-peak zero (OPZ) correction to correct for ArAr interferences on masses 76, 78 and 80, used in the double spike deconvolution generated significant errors of up to 1‰ on the δ82/78Se of the samples
Summary
Recent progress in plasma source multi-collector mass spectrometry in the last decades have enabled the development of the techniques for the measurement of previously unexplored isotope systems, the so-called “non-traditional” elements, including magnesium, iron, titanium, molybdenum, chromium and selenium[1,2,3,4,5,6]. The Se isotope compositions of the Earth’s mantle and other major chemical reservoirs remain poorly constrained[21,22,23,24,25], limiting the further application of this system to terrestrial and planetary geology. This is in part due to the very low abundances of Se in mantle rocks (typically 3-100 ppb26–28) coupled with multiple analytical challenges, such as the low ionisation efficiency of Se in argon plasmas as well as multiple interferences from argide species as well as germanium and arsenic, which are present at significant concentrations in target samples. We have employed a double spike approach, as previous studies have demonstrated the potential of this method to yield highly accurate and precise stable isotope ratio measurements[2,36,37,38,39,40] and focussed on the development of a new method to measure Se stable isotopes to high precision
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