A new highly enriched U reference material for improved simultaneous determination of uranium amount and isotope amount ratios in trace level samples.

A highly-enriched U reference material (>0.99987 n(U)/n(U)) has been prepared and characterized for use as an isotope dilution mass spectrometry spike. An ion exchange separation was performed on 1 g of high purity U to further reduce trace amounts of contaminant Pu in the material. The purified U was then prepared as a master solution which was analyzed for molality of uranium by modified Davies and Gray titration. A portion of the master solution was quantitatively diluted and dispensed for reference material units. Selected units were analyzed for verification of uranium amount and to characterize uranium isotope amount ratios by multi-collector inductively couple plasma mass spectrometry. Modelling of spike-corrected isotopic data show that the new spike will enable simultaneous measurements of uranium amount and isotope amount ratios with resulting uncertainties that are substantially less sensitive to over spiking than widely used U certified reference materials.