高分辨率气体同位素质谱法测定氢同位素丰度

Analysis of Hydrogen Isotope Abundance by High Resolution Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry

  • 摘要: 氢同位素丰度的准确定量对验证氢同位素分离装置的分离效果非常重要,为此,本研究建立了高分辨率气体同位素质谱(HR-IRMS)法测量全范围氢同位素丰度。确定了质谱的线性进样压强范围4~33 Pa与三原子离子产生率的影响因素,三原子离子产生率与进样压强的平方成正比,与离子源加速电压负相关,加速电压应大于8 V;通过自制标准气体制备装置,配制了平衡态的氢同位素标准气,并校正了进样系统分馏效应和各组分灵敏度的差异,验证了该质谱进样方式为严格的分子流进样。采用所建立的方法测量低、中、高不同氘丰度的样品气体。结果表明:对于天然氘丰度的样品,测量外精度小于1%;对于中、高丰度的样品,测量外精度小于0.5%;测量值与标称值吻合良好。与低分辨率的质谱分析方法相比,该方法简单可靠、无需解析质量重叠峰、测量结果准确性不依赖于样品中氢同位素的平衡程度。

     

    Abstract: High resolution isotope ratio mass spectrometry (HR-IRMS) is often used to measure the abundance of deuterium to verify the efficiency of isotope isolation of a cryogenic distillation column system. In order to achieve precise quantification of hydrogen isotope abundance by HR-IRMS, a fine tuning procedure was performed by using molecular hydrogen to optimize the source parameters, steering parameters and analyzer parameters. The mass resolution can reach 10 000 after tuning, which is high enough to separate all potential hydrogen and helium isotopes except for 3He+ and T+. The test results of peak center stability, peak top flatness, resolution and sensitivity stability showed that the performance of the mass spectrometer can meet the demand for hydrogen isotope analysis. The inlet pressure should be in the range of 4-33 Pa to obtain stable sensitivity, and the accelerating voltage of the ion source should not be less than 8 V because it is negatively correlated with the production rate of trimmers (H3+, D3+, H2D+ and HD2+ etc.). As the accelerating voltage decreasing, the production rate of trimers increases. Another key factor affecting the production rate of trimers is the inlet pressure, the square of which is proportional to the production rate of trimers. Therefore, optimizing the ion source parameters to obtain higher sensitivity is a better way than increasing the sample inlet pressure. On this basis, the equilibrium hydrogen isotope standards which are essential to obtain the sensitivity of each component of hydrogen isotopes were prepared by a self-made standard gas preparation device, and the sensitivity values of each component were corrected by pure gases and the self-prepared standard with verified compositions. The molecular leak rate for the inlet hole was determined by monitoring the pressure for H2 and D2 as a function of time as the gas leaked out, and the leak rate of the other components could be calculated using the leak rate of H2 or D2 because the leak rate is inversely proportional to the square root of the molar mass. Standard mixtures were analyzed to test precision and trueness of this method. The results showed that the measurement precision is better than 1% for samples with natural deuterium abundance and better than 0.5% for samples with medium to high abundance of deuterium. The measured values are in good agreement with the standard values. Compared to the low resolution mass spectrometry, this method is simple and reliable, does not need to resolve the mass overlap peak, and the accuracy of the measurement does not depend on the degree of hydrogen isotope balance in the sample.

     

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