Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italia

The concentration of thirty nine geochemically relevant trace elements, from 7Li to 238U, was determined in standard silicate glasses (NIST610, NIST612, BCR-2) using the Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) instrumentation at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Cagliari (Italy). The device is a Quadrupole ICP-MS (Perkin Elmer Elan DRC-e) coupled with a 213 nm Nd:YAG laser probe (New Wave Research). This configuration allows rapid, high quality, in-situ trace elements analysis in glasses and minerals. The calibration strategy, achieved using synthetic multi-element glasses (NIST612), with 44Ca as internal standard, gives an analytical accuracy within 5% error level, providing a precision between 1% and 9%, at 40 µm of crater size for all elements. At a laser spot size of 40 m, the lower limit of detection (LLD) ranges between 0.001 and 1 ppm for all the elements; it increases by about one order of magnitude, without any significant fractionation among the different elements, for a laser spot size of 15 µm. Quality control of LA-ICP-MS analyses is routinely performed analysing a natural standard glass, the BCR-2, certified by the USGS, considered as unknown sample. Results indicate that the instrumentation capabilities are suitable for the geochemical characterisation of various materials of mineralogical, petrological, geological and environmental interest.