Professor Stewart Fallon from world-leading Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences has been involved with Sercon equipment for quite a few years, working on N & C samples on an HS2022 and GSL (a combustion EA which is also linked to a needle injection autosampler which can be used for Gas, Solid and Liquid – a forerunner of the current Sercon IsoEArth products)
Recently, Stewart has enhanced this system with a HT-EA furnace to his system so he can now look at 18O using pyrolysis which service engineer Dave Harris linked to the existing 2022.
Dave has also interfaced the IRMS system to an existing laser ablation system of Stewart’s design utilising the CryoFlex and IsoScell to allow full integration and generation of LA-IRMS data for Carbon Isotopes.
One the first applications for these new techniques will be run by of his PhD students, Oliver Medd, also pictured, will be investigation of the growth rings within a local native tree species, commonly known as snow gum. Snow gum is Australia’s highest elevation tree species, and can potentially aid in deciphering previous climatic conditions and dieback events.
Going forward the lab will further expand their capabilities by developing methods for measuring other Isotopes for example Oxygen.
If you’d like to talk to us about applications of LA-IRMS in your research, just email us, we’d love to hear from you.
