In February 2023, IPGP received a new high-temperature, high-vacuum induction furnace, which is now installed in the noble gas analytical platform. This equipment will enable measuring the elemental and isotopic composition of noble gases in gas-poor samples. The furnace is the commercial version prepared by the Cryoscan company of a prototype designed and patented by researchers and engineers from the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG, Nancy, France) (Zimmermann et al., 2018, Chem. Geol., doi:10.1016/j.chemgeo.2017.09.018). The novelty of this equipment lies in the placement of the induction coil directly in the vacuum chamber, allowing gram-sized samples to be heated in a tantalum crucible without any contact between the heating element and the crucible. The induction technique can achieve temperatures up to 2000°C in just a few minutes. The absence of thermal contacts and rapid heating of the crucible ensures that the analytical blanks for the noble gases are comparable to the blanks for the rest of the analytical system (purification line and mass spectrometer). This is only the second unit built by the Cryoscan company.
Guillaume Avice 