GGR Biennial Critical Review: Analytical Developments Since 2010

Abstract

Advances in the chemical and isotopic characterisation of geological and environmental materials can often be ascribed to technological improvements in analytical hardware. Equally, the creation of novel methods of data acquisition and interpretation, including access to better reference materials, can also be crucial components enabling important breakthroughs. This biennial review highlights key advances in either instrumentation or data acquisition and treatment, which have appeared since January 2010. This review is based on the assessments by scientists prominent in each of the given analytical fields; it is not intended as an exhaustive summary, but rather provides insight from experts of the most significant advances and trends in their given field of expertise. In contrast to earlier reviews, this presentation has been formulated into a unified work, providing a single source covering a broad spectrum of geoanalytical techniques. Additionally, some themes that were not previously emphasised, in particular thermal ionisation mass spectrometry, accelerator‐based methods and vibrational spectroscopy, are also presented in detail.

Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research Bibliographic Review 2012

“…The importance of these samples for the analytical work of geochemists and geoanalysts has been highlighted in the recent review by Wiedenbeck et al . (). This review also contains references, where the production and characterisation of new RMs in 2012 has been described in detail.…”

GGR Biennial Critical Review: Analytical Developments Since 2014

“…Brief introductions to accelerator‐based methods have already been given in the last two GGR Biennial Reviews (Wiedenbeck et al . , ). Hence, we focus here on the very basics.…”

“…Since Mary Horan provided excellent reviews of advances in TIMS analysis in the last two GGR Biennial Reviews (Wiedenbeck et al . , ), this section tries to focus on recent advances in isotopic determination utilising the TIMS technique in the areas of instrument and analytical method development.…”

Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry

“…For more detailed discussions, the reader is referred to publications by Hinton and Fayek. 53,54 For more recent reviews of trends in SIMS applications in the geosciences the reader is referred to Wiedenbeck 55 and Wiedenbeck et al 56 A recent publication by Hoppe et al 33 reviews the capabilities of NanoSIMS in the fields of biogeoscience and cosmochemistry.…”