Engineer LIU Yu and his team describe a method of precise U–Pb dating for zircons as young as the Jurassic age at a scale of up to <5 mm using the CAMECA ims-1280 SIMS.

As a demonstration of this method, three well-characterized zircon standards with a range of ages, AS3 (1099 Ma), Ple_sovice (377 Ma) and Qinghu (159.5 Ma), are analyzed. They demonstrate with these zircon standards that their ages can be determined with precision and accuracy of 1–2% using a spot <5 micron.

Their good results have also benefited greatly from the optimized high transmission secondary optical system of the CAMECA ims-1280 SIMS.

Liu et al. Precise U-Pb zircon dating at a scale of <5 micron by the CAMECA 1280 SIMS using a Gaussian illumination probe. Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 2011, 26: 845-851（Download Here）

Fig. U–Pb zircon concordia diagram and secondary electron images of Qinghu zircon. (Image by LIU)