Oxygen-18 And Deuterium Determination On a Single Water Sample Of a Few Milligrams

Abstract

A small quantity of water may be analyzed for the D/H ratio by the conventional hot-uranium technique [1, 2) or for the 180/160 ratio by the BrF5 technique (3). In both of these techniques, water cannot be recovered after analysis and, therefore, a water sample must be split into two aliquots when both the hydrogen and oxygen isotopic ratios need to be analyzed. However, with decreasing amounts of available water samples, it becomes increasingly more difficult to split samples into fractions of predicted amounts without deteriorating the original isotopic compositions. Thus, for a water sample of less than about 5 mg, which one would often encounter in analyzing such samples as fluid inclusions in ore minerals, a procedure by which one of the two isotopic ratios can be analyzed without destroying the water sample would be very useful. © 1980, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.