Pretreatment of Nitric Acid with Hydrogen Peroxide Reduces Total Procedural Os Blank to Femtogram Levels.

Determining and correcting for background contributions of Re and Os from chemical reagents is critical for accurate and precise Re-Os dating of materials with parts per billion to parts per trillion Re and Os concentrations. Here we investigate reducing Os content in nitric acid, as it is the main contributor to the Os blank. Pretreating high-purity nitric acid with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) significantly reduces nitric acid's Os contribution to femtogram levels, greatly reducing Os blank corrections.