The Isotope Geochemistry Labs are equipped with a clean room facility (including several low-blank chemistry laboratories (class 100), sample preparation and ion-exchange chromatography, a set up for isotope systems: Pb, U-Pb, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd as well as B and Li isotopes), two thermal ionization mass-spectrometers (TIMS) and a multi-collector mass-spectrometer with inductively coupled plasma source (MC-ICP-MS).

Thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) is an analytical method for high-precision measurements of isotope ratios and isotope abundances of elements that are easy to ionize. In geology, the method is mostly applied to measure the isotope abundances of radiogenic isotopes (which in nature often strongly varies) in relation to stable isotopes of the same element. Radiogenic isotopes are the decay products of long-lived radioactive isotopes (e.g. ⁸⁷Rb, ¹⁴⁷Sm or ²³⁸U). We apply this method to …