Article contents
Optimization of the Amount of Zinc in the Graphitization Reaction for Radiocarbon AMS Measurements at LAC-UFF
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2016
Abstract
The Radiocarbon Laboratory of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Brazil, has been successfully applying the zinc reduction method for graphitization of carbon samples since the development of its early protocols in 2009. Successive methodological research aiming to improve and, ultimately, optimize the precision and accuracy of our results indicates that graphitization temperatures as low as 460°C promote erratic 13C isotopic fractionation, but an approximately constant fractionation of about –5‰ is achieved at 520°C. In this work, we present isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) δ13C results for 14C reference materials graphitized at 550°C with variable amounts of zinc. Based on the results obtained from the addition of 20, 35, and 50 mg of zinc, we conclude that a slightly lower variation in 13C isotope fractionation during graphitization is obtained with less zinc. Moreover, the average isotopic fractionation is not altered by increasing the graphitization temperature from 520°C to 550°C.
- Type
- Advances in Physical Measurement Techniques
- Information
- Radiocarbon , Volume 59 , Special Issue 3: Proceedings of the 22nd International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 2) , June 2017 , pp. 885 - 891
- Copyright
- © 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona
Footnotes
Selected Papers from the 2015 Radiocarbon Conference, Dakar, Senegal, 16–20 November 2015
References
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