Calibration method in isotopic carbon analysis

✍ Scribed by Zhang Weicheng; Li Liwu

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1992
• Weight: 227 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0883-2889
• DOI: 10.1016/0883-2889(92)90206-t

✦ Synopsis

Unlike neutrons or gamma-rays, charged particles readily lose energy when they penetrate matter; thus, the main difficulty in its calculation is, perhaps, the complication introduced in its mathematical treatment.

In our experiments, determination of ~3C in breath test samples by proton-induced gamma-ray emission, interesting regularities were found that allowed drastic simplification in the theoretical treatment of the problem, and led to the derivation from first principles of a simple, sufficiently accurate basic equation which proved reliable for the determination of the isotopic abundance ratio ~3C/J2C by low-energy proton bombardment of biological samples with simultaneous prompt gamma spectrometry.