Improved particle location and isotopic screening measurements of sub-micron sized particles by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry

There are a number of applications within cosmochemistry, environmental studies, nuclear safeguards and nuclear forensic analyses that require capabilities for the location and isotopic measurement of sub-micron to micron-sized particles. This task can be divided into two sub tasks; the first problem is to find the particle of interest in a matrix of other materials, the second is to perform accurate and precise isotopic measurements of the individual particles. This paper describes results obtained on real and standard samples using a newly developed Automated Particle Measurement (APM) software, for both Small Geometry (SG) and Large Geometry (LG) Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) instruments. The speed and quality of screening measurements, in particular on the LG-SIMS is far better than previously available. The paper is mainly focused on the analyses of uranium particles for safeguards verification purposes, but the described method can also be used for other applications.

HEDBERG Magnus;  PERES P.;  CLIFF J.B.;  RABEMANANJARA F.;  LITTMANN Francois;  THIELE Hartmut;  VINCENT C.;  ALBERT Noelle; 

2013-01-14

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY

JRC60792

0267-9477,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC60792,   

10.1039/c0ja00181c,