Revolutionizing Sulfur Isotopic Analysis in the Environmental Sciences by Infrared Laser Cavity Enhanced Spectroscopy (SILAS)

Laboratoire(s)/équipe(s) du LabEx OSUG impliqué(e.s) : LaME (LIPhy), LGGE, ISTerre
Porteur du Projet : Erik Kerstel

We propose to develop a powerful new technique for the accurate and fast analysis of the sulfur isotopic composition of sulfur containing compounds. These play a fundamental role in geochemistry, atmospheric science, and geo-microbiology. Conventional sulfur analytical methods are extremely tedious severely hampering the widespread use of these biogeochemical markers. Our method will both circumvent nearly all of the complicated chemical preparations required and replace an expensive (isotope ratio) mass spectrometer (IRMS). In addition, it is compatible with both the off-line techniques and the newly developed on-line, compound specific isotope analysis. So far, no commercial optical instrument exists for sulfur isotope measurements. Success of this project is expected to do the same for sulfur isotopes as the commercial implementations (Picarro, Los Gatos) of our earlier work have done for water isotope analyses.

Soutien attribué : 13 000 € en 2013