Cleanroom

Chemical Preparation for Isotope Analysis

Location : ENS de Lyon, M8 building
Lab manager : Emmanuelle Albalat
Contact : emmanuelle.albalat@ens-lyon.fr

Budget management : Aline Lamboux

Photo Vincent Moncorgé Ⓒ

Introducing the facility

The laboratory has a 100 m² clean-lab on the ENS de Lyon campus for chemical preparation of samples prior to elemental or isotopic analysis on the National Instrument MC-ICP-MS platform. Chemical preparation for isotopic analysis requires, after dissolution of the sample, a succession of different steps to chemically separate the element of interest from the matrix and obtain the purest possible fraction of the element. To limit contamination, these preparations must be carried out in as clean an environment as possible.

The lab is divided into 3 cleanrooms accessed via a common SAS, creating a 0/10/20 Pa overpressure cascade with the outside. A series of filters ending in H14 filters considerably reduce the quantity of particles in the overpressure rooms, which are ventilated with 100% renewed air.

The facility includes 11 air extraction units (15,000 m³/h), fume hoods, ventilated cabinets and laminar flow extraction hoods. These laminar flow hoods provide a re-filtered working environment for the chemical separation of elements, protecting both the handling from contamination and the operator from acid vapors.

Recently installed in new premises, all this equipment improve user safety, provides a large number of working areas in a controlled environment, limits the risk of cross-contamination or environmental contamination, and enables the coexistence of very different manipulations, even on very small quantities of sample or analyte.

Some twenty students, researchers and technical staff apply and develop methods of dissolution and chemical separation of elements by ion exchange chromatography on a wide variety of samples, with applications in geochemistry, geochronology, biogeochemistry, medicine, paleoanthropology, archaeology, etc. Photo Vincent Moncorgé Ⓒ

For all inquiries, please contact the platform manager, we work closely with the National Instrument MC-ICP-MS platform.