Development of a New Safe, Simple and Rapid Technique for Silicate and Oxide d18O Analyses

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EAR-0447229Poulson Stable oxygen isotope analysis of silicates and oxides has long been used as a technique in igneous and metamorphic petrology and geochemistry, with a large number of applications. The frustrating conundrum of silicate and oxide d18O analyses is that while many researchers are keen to use this technique, these analyses require the use of extremely hazardous reagents, and the level of operator skill and training required to perform these analyses is very high. The proposed new analytical technique is a safe, rapid, and simple technique. The new technique will interface a commercially-available very high temperature elemental analyzer to a stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, and is a modification of an existing analytical technique that successfully uses a low temperature elemental analyzer to measure d18O of other materials. The new technique does not use any hazardous fluorination reagents such as F2 or BrF5, and the complexity of operation is relatively low. Preliminary experiments to measure oxygen concentrations using five commonly-analyzed minerals of geological interest (quartz, K-spar, plagioclase, olivine, and magnetite) indicate that these materials quantitatively react to form CO, which is then used to perform d18O analyses. All the necessary equipment for performing conventional and laser BrF5 oxygen isotope analyses are available at the University of Nevada-Reno, and will be used to verify the accuracy and precision of analyses performed using the newly developed technique. If the proposed technique proves to be successful, this will dramatically promote the use of this analysis in geosciences and related research. This will allow for increased accessibility for researchers, especially students, that currently would like to perform these analyses, but are dissuaded due to the safety hazards associated with the existing techniques. In turn, this should provide a significant stimulus to promote research into the fields of petrology and geochemistry.