An efficient and reliable method was developed for the accurate determination of osmium abundance in molybdenite (MoS2) by isotope dilution mass spectrometry. The sample solution of molybdenite was prepared by acid decomposition using the microwave digestion technique with addition of potassium dichromate (K2Cr207) as oxidizing agent and osmium in the sample solution was purified by distillation. There was no change in the ratios of 1870s derived from molybdenite relative to 1920s of an osmium standard with progress of distillation, indicating that isotopes of osmium derived from the two sources were completely homogenized. The precision of the osmium abundance obtained in the developed method was 1% (la). The technique was applied to a natural molybdenite sample for Re-Os age determination and the result was in good agreement with that obtained by the U-Pb method for zircon.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.