Mass bias stabilization by Mg doping for Si stable isotope analysis by MC-ICP-MS

The combined SSB + Mg technique for Si isotope measurements under ‘dry’ plasma conditions provides high tolerances against matrix effects induced by matrix mismatch or contaminant elements.

Improved Mainlobe Interference Suppression Based on Blocking Matrix Preprocess

For the problem of mainlobe direction shifting that is caused by the mainlobe interference suppression based on blocking matrix preprocess, an effective method is proposed which is based on the combination of diagonal loading and linear constraints. Therein, the reason for mainlobe direction shifting is analyzed and found to be that the covariance matrix mismatch exists in the realization of the adaptive beamforming. Therefore, the diagonal loading processing is used to overcome the mismatch and correct the mainlobe direction shifting, and the linear constraints are used to make sure of the beam pattern nulling in the interference directions; then the desired performance of adaptive beamforming is obtained. Simulation results attest the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method, and they also show that the proposed method is insensitive to the selection of diagonal loading level, which means the loading factor is easy to choose.