Highly Sensitive Real-Time Isotopic Quantification of Water by ATR-FTIR

Anal Chem. 2020 Jun 2;92(11):7500-7507. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b05635. Epub 2020 May 12.

Abstract

A method has been developed to reliably quantify the isotopic composition of liquid water, requiring only immersion of a "ReactIR" probe in the sample under test. The accuracy and robustness of this method has been extensively tested using a deuterium/protium system, and substantial improvements in sensitivity were obtained using highly novel chemical signal amplification methods demonstrating a standard deviation of 247 ppb D (a δD of 1.6 ‰). This compares favorably with other more costly and time-consuming techniques and is over 20 times more sensitive than any previously published FTIR study. Computational simulations of a model system match the experimental data and show how these methods can be adapted to a tritium/protium system.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't