The Application of Scanning Proton Microprobe (SPMP) in Study of Trace Gold Distribution

Studies on distribution of trace gold mostly focus on some samples in whichgold content is well above 100 ppm at the present time due to the limitation of analy-sis methods. Progress in research on trace gold (usually less than 100 ppm to n ppm)was rarely reported. Although electronic microprobe (EMP) and scanning electronicmicroprobe (SEM) have a high resolution, their detection limits are still 100-500ppm and 100-300 ppm, respectively. And also the electronic paramagnetic reso-nance spectrometer, an effective method for determining lattice gold of a few tenppm level, unfortunately is still incapable of doing such research. Newly developed