Isotope Ratio Mass-Spectrometer coupled with Gas-Chromatography (GC-irMS)

• Subject Area: Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry
• Term: Funded in 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541563338

The GC-irMS system enables the analysis of stable isotopes (2H, 13C, 15N) on individual organic molecules and thus this method opens up a more detailed characterization of organic substances than the analysis of the entire organic material, which represents only a mixed signal of heterogeneous components. Accordingly, there are diverse innovative applications for the analysis of stable isotopes on individual organic molecules, for example in archaeology, biomedicine, biosynthesis, soil science, extraterrestrial chemistry, forensics, food science, microbiology, organic geochemistry, environmental, and sports science. Due to these countless, innovative applications, operation within a research platform for different user groups is particularly efficient and sustainable. The new GC-irMS system is absolutely necessary to improve the equipment of the existing isotope research research platform at the Leibniz Laboratory at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel (CAU Kiel). This research platform specializes in the investigation of natural isotopic compositions of individual organic molecules, the detection of which is very demanding due to the sometimes small natural variation in the isotopic composition and often very small sample quantities. Accordingly, such GC-irMS systems should ideally be reserved exclusively for sample material with a natural isotope composition, since artificial isotope labels on organic matter usually cause extreme deviations from the natural isotopic composition and can therefore massively affect the analytical quality of natural isotope compositions. At the existing research platform for isotope research at the Leibniz Laboratory, a GC-irMS procured in 2008 via the Excluster FUTURE OCEAN, has so far been used to analyze exclusively natural isotope compositions, primarily in paleoenvironmental research. In order to meet the high demand in this area, a second GC-irMS system, which will also be used exclusively for the analysis of natural isotope compositions, is of great importance. The use of two GC-irMS systems enables the parallel measurement of, for example, 13C and 2H on two systems. This offers two decisive advantages. Firstly, the information about different isotope systems is available almost at the same time and not only after several months as is otherwise the case with sequential measurement of the different isotope systems. Secondly, the throughput of samples can more than double, as not only is there no loss of measuring time due to the need for regular conversion of one system, but with two systems with the same operating time, significantly more analysis capacity is available per year. The planned future applications of component-specific isotope analyzes focus on geosciences and archaeology.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Isotopenverhältnis-Massenspektrometer mit angekoppeltem Gaschromatographen (GC-irMS)
• Instrumentation Group: 1700 Massenspektrometer
• Applicant Institution: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
• Leader: Professor Dr. Ralph Schneider