MRI: Acquisition of a Multi-collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer for Research and Training in the Earth and Environmental Sciences

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

0116395 Edwards This grant, made through the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program, provides partial support for the purchase of a Multicollector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (MC-ICP-MS), associated hardware, and some technical costs associated with the instrument. The instrument will be housed in the Minnesota Isotope Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. The main focus of the laboratory as well as the new instrument will be on problems that can be solved with high-precision, high-sensitivity measurements of actinides in natural materials. The instrument will have multiple ion counting detectors, and therefore have the capability to measure more than one small ion beam simultaneously. Testing and refining of the multiple ion counting system will be a major portion of our group's effort on this proposal. The goal is a significant improvement in precision and/or sensitivity in measuring rare actinide isotopes. One of the main results of such technical improvements will be increases in the precision with which uranium-series ages can be determined. This improvement should impact a wide range of fields in the natural sciences, including climate change, paleoecology, paleoceanography, igneous petrology, anthropology, and geochemistry. Among the specific areas that the new instrumentation will impact are: calibration of the carbon-14 time scale and implications for the earth's carbon cycle, factors that control rapid climate and vegetation change, factors that control the removal of particle-reactive metals in the oceans, paleo-ocean circulation, rates of late Quaternary evolution, and factors affecting the formation of silicate melts in the mantle. ***