Determination of B/Ca of natural carbonates by HR-ICP-MS

Authors :: Sambuddha Misra
Robert Owen
Joanna Kerr
Henry Elderfield
Mervyn Greaves
Aurora C. Elmore
Source :: Geochemistry, geophysics, geosystems, 2014, Vol.15(4), pp.1617-1628 [Peer Reviewed Journal]
Publication Year :: 2014
Publisher :: American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2014.
Abstract: We report a new method for HR-ICP-MS based accurate and precise B/Ca determination from low mass natural carbonates (=65 µg CaCO3 to achieve a comparable external precision of 3.5% (2σ). We report a B/Ca detection limit of 2 µmol/mol compared to >=10 µmol/mol for previous methods, a fivefold improvement. The method presented here can determine a wide range of B/Ca (9.0–250 µmol/mol) in mass limited samples with considerable tolerance for matrix matching efficiency (