Microbeam recoil detection for the study of hydration of minerals

Determination of hydrogen content in geological samples using elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA)

“…Mosbah et al, 1990;Bureau et al, 2003), to characterize mineral phases (Sie et al, 1995) or to determine H partitioning between nominally anhydrous minerals (olivines) and melts preserved as glasses (Sweeney et al, 1997). The last published improvements of the technique performed at the facility of the national Accelerator Center of South Africa have shown that H can be detected in nominally anhydrous minerals with a sensitivity of 420 wt ppm H 2 O (47 wt ppm H) by using a 5 Â 5 lm 2 beam of 2 MeV 4 He + (Sweeney et al, 1997).…”

“…In the ERDA tilted position, this measurement is not possible, but it can be deduced from the RBS spectrum, because the intensity of the RBS spectrum is proportional to the number of incident particles. Note that it would be also possible to use the PIXE spectrum (Sie et al, 1995). We checked that no channelling effects, which may affect the results (Shao et al, 2006), occurred during the analysis of orientated minerals.…”