The precise determination of relative abundances of ultra trace isotopes in the range below 10^-9 is of importance for a wide spectrum of applications in fields like environmental protection, cosmo-chemistry, bio-medical tracer studies or geological and geo-chronological investigations. The necessary high isotopic selectivity, rather complete isobaric suppression and good overall efficiency for these investigations is provided by high-resolution resonance ionization mass spectrometry. Multi-step continuous wave laser excitation and ionization using diode lasers at a compact quadrupole mass spectrometer has been optimized to become a powerful and reliable experimental method, which is just becoming competitive to accelerator mass spectrometry. With this technique we have performed measurements with high isotopic selectivity above 10¹⁰ on the isotopes ⁹⁰Sr and ⁴¹Ca while further studies concern Gd and Pu isotopes. In all cases extensive atomic spectroscopic investigations were required as basis for analytical studies.

Date Published: 28 March 2002
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 4634, Methods for Ultrasensitive Detection II, (28 March 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.463825

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4634:
Methods for Ultrasensitive Detection II
Charles W. Wilkerson Jr., Editor(s)