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  • “Wave” Signal-Smoothing and...
    Hu, Zhaochu; Zhang, Wen; Liu, Yongsheng; Gao, Shan; Li, Ming; Zong, Keqing; Chen, Haihong; Hu, Shenghong

    Analytical chemistry (Washington), 01/2015, Letnik: 87, Številka: 2
    Journal Article

    A novel “wave” signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device has been developed for laser ablation quadrupole and multiple collector ICPMS analysis. With the wave stabilizer that has been developed, the signal stability was improved by a factor of 6.6–10 and no oscillation of the signal intensity was observed at a repetition rate of 1 Hz. Another advantage of the wave stabilizer is that the signal decay time is similar to that without the signal-smoothing device (increased by only 1–2 s for a signal decay of approximately 4 orders of magnitude). Most of the normalized elemental signals (relative to those without the stabilizer) lie within the range of 0.95–1.0 with the wave stabilizer. Thus, the wave stabilizer device does not significantly affect the aerosol transport efficiency. These findings indicate that this device is well-suited for routine optimization of ICPMS, as well as low repetition rate laser ablation analysis, which provides smaller elemental fractionation and better spatial resolution. With the wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device, the mercury gas background is reduced by 1 order of magnitude. More importantly, the 202Hg signal intensity produced in the sulfide standard MASS-1 by laser ablation is reduced from 256 to 0.7 mV by the use of the wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device. This result suggests that the mercury is almost completely removed from the sample aerosol particles produced by laser ablation with the operation of the wave mercury-removing device. The wave mercury-removing device that we have designed is very important for Pb isotope ratio and accessory mineral U–Pb dating analysis, where removal of the mercury from the background gas and sample aerosol particles is highly desired. The wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device was applied successfully to the determination of the 206Pb/204Pb isotope ratio in samples with low Pb content and/or high Hg content.