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

珊瑚、贻贝壳和（微）化石等生物源材料中的微量元素分布提供了有关其生长期间普遍存在的环境条件的重要信息。通过空间分辨测量，这些化学档案可以被破译并按时间顺序分类。这就需要强大的微量分析方法来直接测量骨骼的坚硬部分。将强大的激光烧蚀系统（LA）与专为瞬态测量而设计的实时同步ICP-AES光谱仪相结合，形成新技术“LA-ICP-AES”，这是一项创新，具有尚未充分开发的巨大潜力：与多收集器MS一样，AES光谱仪的实时同时测量导致，元素条件的测量不确定性远低于LA-ICP连续数据采集的测量不确定性，最近开发的具有由激光产生的样品气溶胶的显著更短的冲洗时间的新型烧蚀单元导致连接的光谱仪中的显著增加的信号，因此从而显著改善计数统计，从而降低测量不确定性。这使得直接在骨骼硬部分进行高精度测量成为可能，并且可以省略极其耗时和劳动密集型的样品制备（例如，使用珊瑚作为地球化学档案需要用微型钻头钻取样品材料，将粉末溶解在酸中，产生测量稀释液）。LA-ICP-MS的样品通量高出许多倍，这是迫切需要尽可能多的档案进行更全面的评估。以激光烧蚀分流（LASS）模式并联连接的质谱仪（ICP-MS，ICP-MS/MS）随后将允许同时采集微量元素含量或同位素比。

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.