REE-elements from glass melts report

Samples

We have a set of Rare Earth Element(REE) reference samples as glass melts kindly provided by the University of Edinburgh. Information about these samples is available from https://www.ed.ac.uk/geosciences/about/facilities/all/ionprobe/technical/standards/ree. E. Cairns, P.C. Choi, J. Craven, K. Fearnhead, P. Hadden, P. Hill, S. Malik, M. Saunders A. Simonetti, D. Steele, E. Tomlinson. ‘Rare Earth Element (REE) Standards’. The University of Edinburgh, 2 June 2021. Available: https://www.ed.ac.uk/geosciences/about/facilities/all/ionprobe/technical/standards/ree

The samples are small pieces of transparent glass. REE sample example REE samples

Measurements

Measurements were done in 2024 at Lumo Analytics' facilities at Atomitie 5, Helsinki. The scanner device used is Lumo Analytics' LASOLIBS drill core scanner. It works similarly than our LASOLIBS.

The measurement was done with usual sample scan setup as the laser profiler was able to pick up the glass surfaces and LIBS focus worked alright even with these challenging samples. Varying amount of successful measurements was acquired from each sample.

Data

There is varying amount of successful LIBS measurements from each sample and we look only the most successful measurements. The material is homogenous so even 1 good measurement is enough.

The spectra for each sample are below with raw spectrum and then processed one with the glass part cut off of the signal. Full data will available to download in netCDF format from xxx. Not yet?

Data processing

You can see the julia code on how the data was processed in this Pluto notebook. The main part is calculating the common spectrum part of the all the samples, i.e. contribution from the Si-Al-Ca-O glass and subtracting that for each to get only the REE specific peaks visible.

Per sample analysis

Note: Click on a plot to open an interactive version where you can zoom! And for single element downloads. Below are the experimental spectra for each REE glass melt. Both the actual measurement and then the REE specific part of the spectrum.