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Improved in-situ Determination of Sr Isotope Ratio in Silicate Samples Using LA-MC-ICP-MS and Its Wider Application for Fused Rock Powder

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Abstract

The in-situ Sr isotope determination of solid samples has the advantages of high spatial resolution and convenient and rapid sample preparation. However, due to the lack of column chemistry separation of matrix elements from Sr, the interference correction (especially the isobaric interference from 87Rb on 87Sr) becomes a big issue for high precise in-situ Sr isotope analytical results. In this study, we evaluated the influence of isobaric interference systematically and adopted an improved strategy for isobaric interference correction of Rb. Specifically, as an external standard for data calibration, an in-house silicate standard (Rb-std) was fused from pure oxide powders. The new standard (Rb-std) shows very low contents of Sr (<1 ppm), Yb (<0.09 ppm) and Er (<0.05 ppm), which directly avoid the trouble of interference of doubly charged ions and isobar, when we determinate the mass fractionation factors of Rb (βRb). Our improved method can provide more accurate data than previous researches, in which the mass fractionation were calculated from an external reference material StHs6/80-G with high Rb (30.07 ppm), Sr (482 ppm), Yb (1.13 ppm) and Er (1.18 ppm). Then, these βRb from Rb-std were applied by linear interpolation to the unknown samples for correction of 87Rb on 87Sr. The analytical results of serial international reference materials (BIR-1G, BCR-2G, BHVO-2G, T1-G and ATHO-G) demonstrate that our improved method can raise the upper limit of Rb/Sr for in-situ Sr isotope determination and reduce the relative standard deviation of results. This improvement of the upper limit of Rb/Sr (<0.33) will expand not only range of microanalysis for silicate minerals, but also bulk Sr isotope determination of volcanic rock combining with rapid fusion technique.

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Acknowledgments

Two anonymous reviewers are thanked for the detailed comments that helped us to improve the manuscript. We highly appreciate the helpful suggestions of Dr. Wei Zhang regarding an earlier version of this manuscript. This research is co-supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41530211, 41125013, 41803012), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017M622546) and the Most Special Funds of the State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources (No. MSFGPMR01). The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-019-1214-0.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Lüyun Zhu, Ganglan Zhang, Yongsheng Liu, Jie Lin & Shaoyong Jiang

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center for Exploration of Strategic Mineral Resources, Faculty of Earth Resource, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Lüyun Zhu & Shaoyong Jiang

  3. School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Ganglan Zhang, Yongsheng Liu & Jie Lin

  4. Wuhan Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources, Wuhan, 430205, China

    Xirun Tong

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  1. Lüyun Zhu
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  2. Ganglan Zhang
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Correspondence to Lüyun Zhu.

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Zhu, L., Zhang, G., Liu, Y. et al. Improved in-situ Determination of Sr Isotope Ratio in Silicate Samples Using LA-MC-ICP-MS and Its Wider Application for Fused Rock Powder. J. Earth Sci. 31, 262–270 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-019-1214-0

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