Performance of CRONUS-P - A pyroxene reference material for helium isotope analysis

Helium isotope analyses are central to modern earth science and measured by many noble gas laboratories around the globe (Burnard, 2013; Wieler et al., 2002), spanning a wide spectrum of fundamental research - from identifying primordial reservoirs in the Earth mantle to paleoclimate reconstructions. The CRONUS-Earth initiative included the manufacturing, distribution and analysis of a pyroxene reference material (CRONUS-P) that was designed to be useful for internal reliability control of ³He measurements within a few percent and potentially for ⁴He on a higher level of uncertainty.This short paper describes the CRONUS-P material and its performance as ³He and ⁴He reference sample for noble gas laboratories. The companion paper by Blard et al. 2015 describes in depth the inter-laboratory helium isotope experiment within CRONUS-Earth.We show normalized helium isotope data of CRONUS-P measured at three different noble gas laboratories. Data from all three laboratories show no relation between helium isotope concentrations and sample mass, implying that the material is homogeneous. The data show that CRONUS-P is useful as an internal standard for ³He within better 2% (1σ) and for ⁴He within better 10%.