Part 1: Applications and Geological Significance This is the first part in a two-part series about lithium – so get excited! In this first segment we provide an overview of where lithium comes from, how we use it and why it’s important, and of course its significance in answering geological questions. Lovely, shiny lithium (image owned by Time magazine)What is Lithium? To start off, lithium is an element, specifically a metal found on the upper left-hand side of the periodic table. Lithium gets its name from the Greek word for stone “lithos” because it is present in some amount in almost all r ..read more

When we talk about our instrumentation, it’s with the goal of measuring various isotopes… but not all isotopes are created (or destroyed) equally! This is a summary of isotopes in terms of longevity, abundance, and elemental behavior. When people think of isotopes they often think of nuclear plants… but what makes certain isotopes useful for nuclear energy and others useful for studies of our planet? Great question! We’re so happy you asked… To start off let’s make sure we’re on the same page… remember high school chemistry? Maybe you do or maybe you don’t (or maybe you forget it on purpose ..read more

This may be upsetting to some of our readers, but the reality is no mass spectrometer can produce data forever (*sobbing into lab coat*). While this can be difficult to accept, rest assured that it’s not over for your geochemically enthusiastic instrument… in fact it’s just the beginning! Here we explore exactly what parts of our mass spectrometers can be recycled, and how this is done. There are plenty more years of life in this beauty yet At Isotopx we like to service and maintain even very senior instruments, and offer upgrade services for certain mass spectrometers, particularly older nobl ..read more

I sometimes attend product development meetings at Isotopx. The subject of instrument design, by which I mean the “aesthetic values” of our products are quite often a subject of discussion. If you know your historic isotope ratio instruments, you’ll know that until relatively recently they been a triumph of function over form, with sometimes an almost wilful lack of design behind them. Just look at a TIMS instrument from the 1980s and 1990s and you’ll know what I mean. In this era, the more stainless steel on show, the better, and the more dial and knobs the better too. The manufacturers assum ..read more

If you work in the Earth sciences, as many of our users do, then you probably don’t come across the term “Dual Use” very often, if at all. Yet for the vendors that supply this community, it is a very significant term and has a large effect on where we supply our instruments to. I thought it would be worthwhile explaining a little about what this term means, and how it affects Isotopx and our contemporaries. Firstly, what does it mean? According to the European Union, the definition is: “Dual-use items are goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applicatio ..read more

If you have been following my blogs or have taken an interest in detector technologies, then you probably know about ATONA technology already. If you’re not familiar, then for a short overview try here. In brief, ATONA is a Faraday amplifier system that avoids many of the major disadvantages of traditional resistor-based amplifier systems, in particular avoiding the usage challenges of the higher ohmic value systems. Anyway, I was recently at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Lyon and was asked by a visitor to the Isotopx booth how much it would cost for us to add ATONA technology to ..read more

At the time of writing this blog it’s only a couple of weeks until I head out on a business trip to China and Japan. Although I used to travel a bit when I was younger, it doesn’t happen so much these days, especially in the last three years (for the unmentionable reason). But I always used to relish travel, particularly when it was to either somewhere exotic or else somewhere I’d not ever travel to on vacation. I hear people say that in this modern era of easy, cheap travel and constant social media that the world is becoming a smaller place with less distinct cultural differences from region ..read more

In the world of analytical instrumentation, it’s quite a well-trodden path to move from test and installation engineering to marketing, sales or product management. It’s the route that I took myself, along with a number of my colleagues here at Isotopx. But why does this happen so commonly, what is it about test and installation engineering that works so well as a precursor to product management? And what exactly does a test and installation engineer do? Should you consider it as a career path? Let’s take a look, and as with previous blogs this will be informed by my own background and anecdot ..read more

Many of our customers, past, present and future, are highly successful academics. Therefore, the question about consideration of a career in the commercial world is a contentious one at best. I’m guessing that the majority of people in our sphere that see the abovementioned question will have a pretty clear answer in mind. But there will be some academics that do feel they can make a go of life in the private sector. I can even use myself as an example. I left academia following a two-year post-doctorate position working in UHV physics. The short version is that my position was funded in a way ..read more

Much of my mass spectrometry experience has been associated with ICP-MS so I’m far from an expert in thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS), meaning every day can be a school day at Isotopx. Today I was wondering about filament preparation techniques such as carburization to increase efficiency of small samples. However, I thought I’d first look at degassing of filaments, why it’s done, how it’s done, and how Isotopx can help. Degassing is quite easy to understand – it’s basically used to clean filaments (typically rhenium) before they are loaded in to the mass spectrometer. The degassing ..read more