Production and characterization of (60)Fe standards for accelerator mass spectrometry

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is one of the most sensitive analysis techniques to measure long-lived radionuclides, reaching detection limits for isotopic ratios down to 10(−15)–10(−16) in special cases. Its application portfolio covers nearly every field of environmental research, considering processes in the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and the cosmosphere. Normally, AMS measures the content of isotopes in comparison to a validated standard. However, in some cases like for example (60)Fe, well characterized standard materials are difficult to produce due to the extreme rareness of the isotope. We report here on the manufacturing of a set of (60)Fe standards, obtained by processing irradiated copper from a beam dump of the high-power proton accelerator (HIPA) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). The isotopic ratios of the standards have been adjusted via a dilution series of a master solution, isotopic content of which has been characterized by Multi Collector–Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS). In total, we produced three samples with isotopic ratios of 1.037(6)·10(−8), 1.125(7)·10(−10) and 1.234 (7)·10(-12), respectively. The latter had already been applied in three pioneering AMS studies investigating the remaining signal of injected matter of nearby super novae explosions in sediment archives.