ALBERT

Description: We installed the new Isotopx ATONA Faraday cup detector amplifiers on an Isotopx NGX mass spectrometer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in early 2018. The ATONA is a capacitive transimpedance amplifier, which differs from the traditional resistive transimpedance amplifier used on most Faraday detectors for mass spectrometry. Instead of a high-gain resistor, a capacitor is used to accumulate and measure charge. The advantages of this architecture are a very low noise floor, rapid response time, stable baselines, and very high dynamic range. We show baseline noise measurements and measurements of argon from air and cocktail gas standards to demonstrate the capabilities of these amplifiers. The ATONA exhibits a noise floor better than a traditional 1013 Ω amplifier in normal noble gas mass spectrometer usage, superior gain and baseline stability, and an unrivaled dynamic range that makes it practical to measure beams ranging in size from below 10−16 to above 10−9 A using a single amplifier.

Description: 40Ar/39Ar geochronology relies on magnetic sector mass spectrometers to determine relative isotopic abundances. Ongoing technological developments within noble gas mass spectrometers over the last decade have led to analysis of increasingly smaller samples and higher precision, but also result in more complex data correction and interpretation. We describe a new multi-collector noble gas spectrometer, the Isotopx NGX-600, that is configured to optimize 40Ar/39Ar measurements. The NGX-600 is equipped with 9 Faraday collectors and one ion counting electron multiplier. Each Faraday is equipped with Isotopx ATONA® amplifier technology, enabling measurements spanning a dynamic range of amplified beam current from below 10−16 A to above 10−9 A. The performance of the NGX-600 is evaluated using both a conventional Nier-type ion source, and a next generation low temperature ion source, which allows for trap current variation from 200 μA to 1000 μA. We have performed over 3000 analyses of atmospheric argon to: (1) assess optimal measurement and integration times for blanks, baselines, and air aliquots of various ion intensities, (2) quantify the sensitivity via measurements of first principles 40Ar/39Ar standards, (3) compare the sensitivity between the conventional and new low temperature Nier-type ion sources, and (4) evaluate corrections associated with inter-Faraday biases, instrumental mass bias, and Faraday-multiplier gain. In addition to optimization experiments, we report a comparative analysis of both single crystal fusion and incremental heating data from Quaternary volcanic rocks obtained using both the 5-collector Nu Instruments Noblesse and the NGX-600 spectrometers.