The
work horse of the BU TIMS facility is a state-of-art Thermo-Finnigan Triton
thermal isonization mass spectrometer equipped with 9 Faraday collectors
(left) and an electron multiplier. Our Triton instrument is currently
used mainly for low-level (< 10 ng) Nd & Sr isotopic measurements.
The large aspect ratio of the cups significantly reduces secondary emmission
into the analyzer array, while the analyzer geometry allows for a 17%
relative mass spaing to be achieved. The analyzer system also incorporates,
by means of a relay matrix, virtual amplifier technology. Importantly
this can cancel out individual gain uncertainties between the amplifiers
of the analyzer and allows for significant improvements in precision.
The instrument is specified at 10 ppm (2s) external reproducibility for
large (300 ng) Sr and Nd isotopic measurements. The BU TIMS facility specializes
in running much smaller samples without any significant loss in the manufactures
quoted precision.
The
work horse of the BU TIMS facility is a state-of-art Thermo-Finnigan Triton
thermal isonization mass spectrometer equipped with 9 Faraday collectors
(left) and an electron multiplier. Our Triton instrument is currently
used mainly for low-level (< 10 ng) Nd & Sr isotopic measurements.
The large aspect ratio of the cups significantly reduces secondary emmission
into the analyzer array, while the analyzer geometry allows for a 17%
relative mass spaing to be achieved. The analyzer system also incorporates,
by means of a relay matrix, virtual amplifier technology. Importantly
this can cancel out individual gain uncertainties between the amplifiers
of the analyzer and allows for significant improvements in precision.
The instrument is specified at 10 ppm (2s) external reproducibility for
large (300 ng) Sr and Nd isotopic measurements. The BU TIMS facility specializes
in running much smaller samples without any significant loss in the manufactures
quoted precision.
