Facilities & Equipment

The Tescan MIRA 4 Scanning Electron Microscope.

The characterization of complex materials like critical minerals and industrial byproducts requires a large suite of techniques for microscopic imaging, chemical mapping and the determination of crystal structure, composition and radioactivity.

The Center has acquired such capabilities to supplement existing characterization techniques at the MagLab. These instrumental capabilities are described individually below.

Microscopy

Tescan SEM

The Tescan MIRA 4 Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with Secondary Electron (SE), Backscattered Electron (BSE), and in-beam SE detectors, as well an Ultim Max 170 EDS/EDX (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy) detector and Unity BEX (Backscattered Electron and X-ray) detector from Oxford Instruments.

X-Ray Diffraction

Anton Paar XRD

Anton Paar XRDynamic 500 Automated Multipurpose Powder X-Ray Diffractometer equipped with HTK 1200N High-Temperature Oven Chamber and CHC Plus+ Cryo & Humidity Chamber.

Bruker XRD

$Bruker Phaser D2 X-Ray Diffractometer$

Bruker D2 Phaser x-ray powder diffractometer

Laser Ablation Sector Field ICP-MS

Thermo Element XR & ESL ImageGEO laser

Element XR & ESLimageGEO laser

Thermo Element XR™ coupled to an Elemental Scientific Lasers ImageGEO™ system.

Nu Vitesse ToF & Teledyne Iridia Laser

Nu Instruments Vitesse Time-of-Flight (ToF) chemical imaging inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer coupled to a Teledyne Photon Machines Iridia 193 nm excimer (1,000 Hz) laser ablation system.

Sector Field ICP-MS

Thermo Element 2 ICP-MS

Thermo Element 2™ magnetic sector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer equipped with Elemental Scientific Inc. nebulizers.

Gamma Ray Detectors

Mirion SAGe™ & BEGe™ Detectors

Mirion Technologies SAGe™ Small Anode Germanium Well Detector (right) and BEGe™ Broad Energies Germanium Detector (left).

Alpha Autoradiography

AI4R BeaQuant-S

Atlantic Instruments for Research (AI4R) BeaQuant-s for in situ imaging of radioactive minerals at 20-micron scales.

Ion Chromatography

Metrohm IC

Metrohm Ion chromatograph

Metrohm Inc. Dual Channel 940 Professional Ion Chromatograph

Facilities

Sample Preparation Area

Sample preparation area

Sample preparation area equipped with Cole-Parmer StableTemp Oven, SPEX® Sample Prep 8000M Mixer/Mill, SPEX® Sample Prep 3636 X-PRESS, Retsch AS 200 Jet Sieve, and Advantech VS1000 Varisifter™.

Clean Laboratory

A metal-free Class 100 HEPA filtered clean laboratory

A metal-free Class 100 HEPA filtered clean laboratory.

Last modified on 30 July 2024