LA-ICP-MS of rare earth elements concentrated in cation-exchange resin particles for origin attribution of uranium ore concentrate

Developing Nuclear Forensics Signatures and National Nuclear Forensics Libraries for the African Continent: A Case Review for South Africa

“…Studies conducted by Asai and Limbeck [13], reported a directly proportional relationship between REE atomic number and intensity or integrated counts which is opposite of this work. This can be due to additional interferences or elemental fractionation from the ICP-MS.…”

Evaluating Best Practices in Raman Spectral Analysis for Uranium Speciation and Relative Abundance in Aqueous Solutions

“…A wide range of spectroscopic techniques are employed for the identification of hexavalent uranium (U­(VI)) in solution − and solid phase, , but Raman spectroscopy is increasingly being utilized for both species identification and quantitative analysis. , Alpha spectrometry and mass spectrometry are considered the gold standard for quantitative analysis of U and provide information on isotopic signatures for nuclear forensics applications. − Pretreatment steps for both methods can be time-consuming as the typical sample preparation includes dissolution of the solid phase in acid, followed by ion exchange, liquid–liquid extraction, or extraction chromatography. , Optical spectroscopy methods including fluorescence, FTIR, and UV, do provide some additional chemical information; − however, the resulting spectra contain broad overlapping features from various sample components. This limitation prevents positive identification of U species using UV spectroscopy and results in species validation if species also exhibit unique fluorescence spectra .…”

Visualising mouse neuroanatomy and function by metal distribution using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry imaging

“…Recent advances using exogenous metal tagging of specific biomolecules enable the second, and perhaps most versatile, application of three-dimensional imaging of metals by LA-ICP-MS. Immunohistochemistry using rare-earth-tagged antibodies avoids many of the problems associated with fluorescence, such as intensity loss with time, staining artefacts and autofluorescence, 38 and detection of metal-tagged antibodies using LA-ICP-MS is very sensitive, with detection limits as low as 0.1 ng. 39 Here, we used anti-TH antibodies tagged with 173 Yb to reconstruct the dopaminergic system according to TH distribution. The resulting map was in accordance with ISH data on TH RNA levels from the ARA 26 —and compared to the ARA, which reports ISH data at a 200 μm spatial resolution, our method not only is at a higher spatial resolution, but also more sensitive and specific.…”