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Laser Ablation (193 nm), Purification and Determination of Very Low Concentrations of Solar Wind Nitrogen Implanted in Targets from the GENESIS Spacecraft
Author(s) -
Zimmermann Laurent,
Burnard Pete,
Marty Bernard,
Gaboriaud Fabien
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
geostandards and geoanalytical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.037
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1751-908X
pISSN - 1639-4488
DOI - 10.1111/j.1751-908x.2009.00021.x
Subject(s) - nitrogen , laser ablation , excimer laser , spacecraft , laser , noble gas , materials science , time of flight mass spectrometry , chemistry , analytical chemistry (journal) , ion , optics , chromatography , aerospace engineering , physics , organic chemistry , engineering , ionization
The GENESIS space mission recovered ions emitted by the Sun during a 27 month period. In order to extract, purify and determine the very low quantities of solar nitrogen implanted in the GENESIS targets, a new installation was developed and constructed at the CRPG (Nancy, France). It permitted the simultaneous determination of nitrogen and noble gases extracted from the target by laser ablation. The extraction procedure used a 193 nm excimer laser that allowed for surface contamination in the outer 5 nm to be removed, followed by a step that removed 50 nm of the target material, extracting the solar nitrogen and noble gases implanted in the target. Following purification using Ti and Zr getters for noble gases and a Cu‐CuO oxidation cycle for N 2 , the extracted gases were analysed by static mode (pumps closed) mass spectrometry using electron multiplier and Faraday cup detectors. The nitrogen blanks from the purification section and the static line (30 minutes) were only 0.46 picomole and 0.47 picomole, respectively.