Magnesium isotope analysis using a MC-ICP-MS

As a major constituent of primary rock-forming minerals, the element magnesium (Mg) is the sixth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Mg isotopes offer important information on various physicochemical processes occurring at the Earth due to the large relative mass differences. With these reasons, several studies have begun to elucidate the fundamental behavior of Mg isotopes. However, there is none to analyze and study Mg isotopes in Korea. To this end, we firstly develop Mg purification method and Mg isotope analysis using cool-plasma multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS). To evaluate the precision and accuracy of our results, eleven samples including Mg isotope standards, powdered rock standards, and seawater standard, were analyzed. Measured delta Mg-26(DSM)3 values of all samples are in excellent agreement with reported values within the error. This indicates that our established method and measurement is reliable and thus can offer powerful opportunities for directly tracing the Mg cycle.