"Non-invasive" portable laser ablation sampling for lead isotope analysis of archaeological silver: A comparison with bulk and In situ laser ablation techniques

S. W. Merkel*, P. D'Imporzano, K. Van Zuilen, J. Kershaw, G. R. Davies

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

252 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The main factor restricting lead isotope analysis of metals from museum collections is the requirement for physical material. Hence, there are major incentives for developing minimally invasive methods for lead isotope analysis that are accurate and precise enough to reveal historical information about artefacts and their origin. Portable laser ablation (pLA), collecting microscopic samples on Teflon filters, has four key benefits. It produces no visual impact to the artefacts, does not require transport of artefacts to laboratory facilities, there are no artefact size restrictions, and samples are processed under clean laboratory conditions allowing Pb purification prior to measurement by solution MC-ICPMS. To validate the efficacy of the pLA technique on silver, nine matrixed-matched commercial, in-house and archaeological reference materials were sampled and analysed multiple times (9-10). The pLA mean analyses (±2SD) were all consistent with inter-laboratory bulk analyses. The digestion of sample filters produces precisions that are consistently more than five-times better than in situ nsLA-MC-ICPMS and are the same order of magnitude expected for bulk samples processed in different laboratories. This journal is

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)148-156
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry
Volume37
Issue number1
Early online date1 Dec 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The research was funded by the European Research Council under the ERC Starting Grant awarded to Jane Kershaw (Action number 802349) and the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 319209 (ERC-Synergy NEXUS 1492). This project has been supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science within the context of the Dutch node of E-RIHS (European Infrastructure for Heritage Science).

Publisher Copyright:
© The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Funding

The research was funded by the European Research Council under the ERC Starting Grant awarded to Jane Kershaw (Action number 802349) and the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 319209 (ERC-Synergy NEXUS 1492). This project has been supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science within the context of the Dutch node of E-RIHS (European Infrastructure for Heritage Science).

FundersFunder number
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme319209, 802349
Seventh Framework Programme
European Research Council
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap
Seventh Framework Programme

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of '"Non-invasive" portable laser ablation sampling for lead isotope analysis of archaeological silver: A comparison with bulk and In situ laser ablation techniques'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this