"Wave" signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device for laser ablation quadrupole and multiple collector ICPMS analysis: application to lead isotope analysis.

A novel "wave" signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device has been developed for laser ablation quadrupole and multiple collector ICPMS analysis. With the wave stabilizer that has been developed, the signal stability was improved by a factor of 6.6-10 and no oscillation of the signal intensity was observed at a repetition rate of 1 Hz. Another advantage of the wave stabilizer is that the signal decay time is similar to that without the signal-smoothing device (increased by only 1-2 s for a signal decay of approximately 4 orders of magnitude). Most of the normalized elemental signals (relative to those without the stabilizer) lie within the range of 0.95-1.0 with the wave stabilizer. Thus, the wave stabilizer device does not significantly affect the aerosol transport efficiency. These findings indicate that this device is well-suited for routine optimization of ICPMS, as well as low repetition rate laser ablation analysis, which provides smaller elemental fractionation and better spatial resolution. With the wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device, the mercury gas background is reduced by 1 order of magnitude. More importantly, the (202)Hg signal intensity produced in the sulfide standard MASS-1 by laser ablation is reduced from 256 to 0.7 mV by the use of the wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device. This result suggests that the mercury is almost completely removed from the sample aerosol particles produced by laser ablation with the operation of the wave mercury-removing device. The wave mercury-removing device that we have designed is very important for Pb isotope ratio and accessory mineral U-Pb dating analysis, where removal of the mercury from the background gas and sample aerosol particles is highly desired. The wave signal-smoothing and mercury-removing device was applied successfully to the determination of the (206)Pb/(204)Pb isotope ratio in samples with low Pb content and/or high Hg content.