A simple solution to expanding available reference materials for Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry analysis: Applications to sedimentary materials

Analytical data on sediments are of great importance in understanding and documenting environmental issues. For laboratories interested in in-situ chemical analysis of sediments by LA-ICP-MS, a major issue is the lack of appropriate matrix matched sediment reference materials. Those available were largely designed for partial extractions which generally do not reflect the total elemental compositions. In this work we provide a comprehensive study on chemical compositions of seven currently available sediment reference materials (Lake sediments: LKSD-1, LKSD-2, LKSD-3, Stream sediments: STSD-2, STSD-3, and Marine sediments: PACS-2, MESS-3) as determined by Solution Nebulization Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (SN-ICP-MS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) after digestion in a mixture of concentrated HNO3 and HF acids. We also report a simple method to prepare these sediment reference materials and more generally appropriate sediment cores for LA-ICP-MS analysis using epoxy resin. This sample preparation method maintains sediment integrity for high spatial resolution analysis which is required for tracing changes in environmental conditions over short time periods. This work also demonstrates the application of fs-LA-ICP-MS as a tool for direct, rapid and high spatial resolution analysis of sediments.