QUESTIONS and ANSWERS:
Everything you always wanted to know about AFTA^® and Geotrack’s thermal history services.

 

Q: What is AFTA®? A: AFTA® is a proprietary system of techniques and principles designed by Geotrack International to extract thermal history information from fission tracks in apatite. AFTA® is the registered trademark of Geotrack International, and is not available from any other supplier. Find out more...

 

Q: Why is it so important to measure chlorine content? A: Chlorine exerts a systematic control on fission track annealing (the rate at which tracks shorten in response to heating), and different grains within a sample can show significant differences in the degree of annealing. Measuring wt% Cl allows us to include this differential annealing as an additional parameter to constrain thermal history, whereas ignoring the effect can lead to major errors. Find out more...

 

Q: Can’t the etch pit diameter be used instead? A: We evaluated this as a possible surrogate for Cl measurement at an early stage in our development. but our experience showed that track size showed only a very poor correlation with differential annealing rates and was of no practical use. A recent published study which claimed otherwise actually very clearly demonstrates our point of view. Find out more...

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