Determination of 13C/12C carbon isotope ratio

Anal Chem. 2006 May 1;78(9):3080-3. doi: 10.1021/ac0517038.

Abstract

Isotopomers 12CO2 and 13CO2 absorbed into polystyrene films provide narrow, sharp, and well-resolved IR absorption bands for the nu3 antisymmetric stretching mode. This is exploited to set up an inexpensive FT-IR-based method for the measurement of the carbon isotope ratio. Accuracy of 2.5 per thousand delta13C units is readily achieved already at a low resolution of 2 cm(-1).