Laser Ablation ICP Atomic Emission Spectrometry (LA-ICP-AES) for in situ microanalysis

• Subject Area: Geology and Palaeontology
• Term: Funded in 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464364655

Trace element distributions in biogenic materials such as corals, mussel shells and (micro)fossils provide important information on the environmental conditions that prevailed during their growth. With spatially resolved measurements, these chemical archives can be deciphered and chronologically classified. This requires powerful microanalysis methods for direct measurements on the skeletal hard parts. The coupling of a powerful laser ablation system (LA) with a real-simultaneous ICP-AES spectrometer designed for transient measurements to form the new technology "LA-ICP-AES" is innovative and has enormous potential that has not yet been fully exploited: the real-simultaneous measurement of an AES spectrometer leads, as with multi-collector MS, to far lower measurement uncertainties of elemental conditions than is possible with sequential data acquisition as with LA-ICP-MS. The recent development of novel ablation cells with significantly shorter washout times of the sample aerosol generated by the laser leads to significantly increased signals in the connected spectrometer and thus to significantly improved counting statistics with resulting lower measurement uncertainties. This enables high-precision measurements directly on the skeletal hard parts, and the extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive sample preparation, can be omitted (for example, the use of corals as geochemical archives requires the drilling of sample material with a micro drill, dissolving of the powder in acid, producing measurement dilutions). The LA-ICP-MS results in a many times higher sample throughput, which is urgently needed for a more comprehensive evaluation of as many such archives as possible. A mass spectrometer (ICP-MS, ICP-MS/MS) connected in parallel in laser ablation split stream (LASS) mode will later allow the simultaneous acquisition of trace element contents or isotope ratios.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Laser Ablation-ICP-Atom-Emissions-Spektrometrie (LA-ICP-AES) für die in situ-Mikroanalyse
• Instrumentation Group: 1700 Massenspektrometer
• Applicant Institution: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
• Leader: Professorin Dr. Miriam Pfeiffer