TY - JOUR A1 - Vogl, Jochen T1 - Advances in isotope ratio mass spectrometry and required isotope reference materials JF - Mass spectrometry N2 - The article gives a condensed version of the keynote lecture held at the International Mass Spectrometry Conference 2012 in Kyoto. Starting with some examples for isotope research the key requirements for metrologically valid procedures enabling traceable and comparable isotope data are discussed. Of course multi-collector mass spectrometers are required which offer sufficiently high isotope ratio precision for the intended research work. Following this, corrections for mass fractionation/discrimination, validation of the analytical procedure including chemical sample preparation and complete uncertainty budgets are the most important issues for obtaining a metrologically valid procedure for isotope ratio determination. Only the application of such metrologically valid procedures enables the generation of traceable and comparable isotope data. To realize this suitable isotope and/or δ-reference materials are required, which currently are not sufficiently available for most isotope systems. Boron is given as an example, for which the situation regarding isotope and δ-reference materials is excellent. Boron may therefore serve as prototype for other isotope systems. KW - Isotope reference materials KW - Delta reference materials KW - Traceability KW - Comparability KW - Measurement uncertainty KW - Synthetic isotope mixtures KW - Mass fractionation KW - Mass discrimination PY - 2013 DO - https://doi.org/10.5702/massspectrometry.S0020 SN - 2187-137X SN - 2186-5116 VL - 2 IS - 50020 SP - 1 EP - 7 AN - OPUS4-28562 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogl, Jochen A1 - Rosner, Martin T1 - Production and certification of a unique set of isotope and delta reference materials for Boron isotope determination in geochemical, environmental and industrial materials JF - Geostandards and geoanalytical research N2 - Isotopic reference materials are essential to enable reliable and comparable isotope data. In the case of boron only a very limited number of such materials is available, thus preventing adequate quality control of measurement results and validation of analytical procedures. To address this situation a unique set of two boron isotope reference materials (ERM-AE102a and -AE104a) and three offset δ11B reference materials (ERM-AE120, -AE121 and -AE122) were produced and certified. The present article describes the production and certification procedure in detail. The isotopic composition of all the materials was adjusted by mixing boron parent solutions enriched in 10B or 11B with a boron parent solution having a natural isotopic composition under full gravimetric control. All parent solutions were analysed for their boron concentration as well as their boron isotopic composition by thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) using isotope dilution as the calibration technique. For all five reference materials the isotopic composition obtained on the basis of the gravimetric data agreed very well with the isotopic composition obtained from different TIMS techniques. Stability and homogeneity studies that were performed showed no significant influence on the isotopic composition or on the related uncertainties. The three reference materials ERM-AE120, ERM-AE121 and ERM-AE122 are the first reference materials with natural δ11B values not equal to 0‰. The certified δ11B values are -20.2‰ for ERM-AE120, 19.9‰ for ERM-AE121 and 39.7‰ for ERM-AE122, each with an expanded uncertainty (k = 2) of 0.6‰. These materials were produced to cover about three-quarters of the known natural boron isotope variation. The 10B enriched isotope reference materials ERM-AE102a and ERM-AE104a were produced for industrial applications utilising 10B for neutron shielding purposes. The certified 10B isotope abundances are 0.29995 for ERM-AE102a and 0.31488 for ERM-AE104a with expanded uncertainties (k = 2) of 0.00027 and 0.00028, respectively. Together with the formerly certified ERM-AE101 and ERM-AE103 a unique set of four isotope reference materials and three offset δ11B reference materials for boron isotope determination are now available from European Reference Materials. KW - Boron isotope variations KW - Delta-scale KW - Stable isotopes KW - Isotope reference materials KW - Delta reference materials KW - Metrology in chemistry KW - Absolute isotope abundance PY - 2012 DO - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-908X.2011.00136.x SN - 1639-4488 SN - 1751-908X VL - 36 IS - 2 SP - 161 EP - 175 PB - Blackwell CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-26260 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogl, Jochen A1 - Rosner, Martin A1 - Pritzkow, Wolfgang T1 - The need for new isotope reference materials JF - Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry N2 - Isotope reference materials are needed to calibrate and validate analytical procedures used for the determination of isotope amount ratios, procedurally defined isotope ratios or so-called δ values. In contrast to the huge analytical progress in isotope ratio analytics, the production of isotope reference materials has not kept pace with the increasing needs of isotope analysts. Three representative isotope systems are used to explain the technical and non-technical difficulties and drawbacks, on one hand, and to demonstrate what can be achieved at its best, on the other hand. A clear statement is given that new isotope reference materials are needed to obtain traceable and thus comparable data, which is essential for all kinds of isotope research. The range of available isotope reference materials and δ reference materials should be increased and matrix reference materials certified for isotope compositions or δ values, which do not exist yet, should be provided. KW - Isotope reference materials KW - Delta reference materials KW - Synthetic isotope mixtures KW - Mass spectrometry KW - Comparability KW - Traceability KW - Measurement uncertainty PY - 2013 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-012-6605-3 SN - 1618-2642 SN - 1618-2650 VL - 405 IS - 9 SP - 2763 EP - 2770 PB - Springer CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-28169 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -