Quantification of Water Content and Speciation in Synthetic Rhyolitic Glasses: Optimising the Analytical Method of Confocal Raman Spectrometry

Quantification of water content in silicate glasses is of vital significance in understanding magma evolution and metamorphic anataxis. Here we provide a method for the determination of total dissolved water content and water speciation in silicate melts by confocal laser Raman spectrometry based on a set of hydrous rhyolitic glasses. A series of alumino-silicate glasses with water contents from 0.33 to 9.05% m/m were synthesised in a piston cylinder apparatus. Synchrotron-FTIR mapping shows that these glasses have relatively homogeneous distributions of dissolved water. Total water contents of the glasses were precisely measured by TC/EA-MS and FTIR. Both external and internal calibration were established for the quantitative analysis of water content and water speciation in the silicate glasses based on excellent linear correlation between total dissolved water content and integrated area of the water Raman band. Furthermore, by decomposing the total water Raman bands into four Gaussians components, the relative concentration of water speciation (OH groups and molecules H₂O_m) dissolved in the glasses was determined with a similar trend to water speciation data derived from FTIR. We suggest that the relative concentration of water speciation can be estimated in rhyolitic glasses with 4–8% m/m H₂O. Our work provides an accurate method to determine total water content and a potential tool to limit the relative concentration of water speciation dissolved in silicic glasses.