Research
The department offers exciting student and faculty research possibilities in the fields of geomicrobiology and life in extreme environments, geophysics, seismology, mantle dynamics, igneous petrology, volcanology, low-temperature geochemistry, mineral surface geochemistry, mineralogy and crystallography, sedimentology and stratigraphy, tectonics and structural geology, paleoclimatology and geomorphology, hydrogeology and contaminant transport, stable and radiogenic isotope geochemistry,paleobiology and paleoecology.
Many of our research areas include Albania, Argentina, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Azores, Bahama Islands, Bolivia, Cascadia, Canada, Canary Islands, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Curacao, Galapagos Islands, Greece, India, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Mediterranean region, Mexico, Namibia, Nepal, Norway, Ohio-Pennsylvania-Indiana-Illinois-Kentucky, Oregon Plateau, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Rio Grande Rift, Snake River Plain, South Africa, Tibet, Turkey and in the Rocky Mountains where the department maintains a permanent field station near Dubois, WY.
Labs and Facilities
GEOCHEMISTRY
Geochemistry Clean Labs
An ~4,000 ft2 isolated clean suite for isotope & trace metal geochemistry including ~1,500 ft2 of class 100 and 1000 isotope geochemistry labs (with separate sub-rooms for cosmochemistry and radiochemistry), dedicated for chemical separations of Re-Os, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf, Rb-Sr, Pb, U, Th, Ra; and ~400 ft2 devoted to chemical separations for metal stable isotopes.
GEOCHEMISTRY
Sample Dissolution
Anton Paar HPA-S High Pressure Asher equipped with glassy carbon and quartz digestion vessels. Glassblowing station and dedicated oven for Carius tube digestions. Milestone Ethos 1 Microwave digestion system, including high temperature and high pressure rotors and vessels for digestions of rock and mineral separates at high pressure (to 1500 psi) and high temperature (280 – 300 degrees C) and equipped with vacuum assisted evaporation and scrubbing system. New Evapoclean Closed-Environment Digestion & Evaporation System for simultaneous digestion or evaporation of up to 12 samples at temperatures up to 250 C. Dedicated perchloric hood with washdown system.
GEOCHEMISTRY
Elemental Analysis
Agilent 720 ICP-OES equipped with Agilent SPS3 autosamplers, and high-resolution ICP-MS (Nu Instruments AttoM) with ESI NWR193 laser ablation system.
GEOCHEMISTRY
Mass Spectrometry
An ~1,200 ft2 mass spectrometry lab houses a Thermo-Finnigan Triton multi-collector TIMS with negative and positive ion capabilities, 9 Faraday collectors, an RPQ filter, and an ion counting system, and a Nu Instruments Plasma 3 MC-ICP-MS equipped with multiple ion counting, an EATO and deceleration filters for high abundance. Dedicated sub-room for filament making, outgassing, and sample loading. Used routinely for measurement of Sr, Nd, Pb, and Os isotope systems and U-series disequilibria (U-Th-Ra).
MINERALOGY
X-Ray Crystallography
Two X-ray diffraction laboratories including a Scintag Pad X powder diffractometer and a Bruker APEX single crystal diffractometer with a 4K CCD detector.
MINERALOGY
Synthesis Lab
The lab is equipped with facilities for the synthesis of ambient to high temperature and ambient to moderate pressure minerals; equipment includes five programmable ovens (ambient to 300 C) and furnaces (ambients to 1400 C), numerous Teflon-line Parr bombs, and sample preparation equipment. We have also built a chemostat for constat addition (steady state) aqueous crystal growth experiments.
MICROSCOPY
Departmental Microscopy Lab
Petrographic microscopes equipped with digital photographic, image analysis, and automated point counting capabilities, reflected light Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy, a Nuclide Cathodoluminoscope with a CCD digital camera, and a digital Instruments NanoScope MultiMode scanning probe microscope with STM and AFM (including tapping mode, Phase Imaging, MFM).
MICROSCOPY
兔子先生 University Center for Advanced Microscopy and Imaging (CAMI)
CAMI houses 2 scanning electron microscopes (SEM), 3 transmission electron microscopes (TEM), 3 laser scanning confocal microscopes, 1 deconvolution light microscope, 1 wide-field multimode light microscope, and 1 fluorescence stereoscope system. Both SEMs are equipped with energy dispersive x-ray microanalysis and one with an electron back-scattered diffraction system (EBSD); 1 scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) equipped with energy-dispersive x-ray microanalysis, electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and energy selective imaging (ESI).
SAMPLE PREPARATION
Rock Sawing, Cushing & Powdering Labs
Dedicated "wet" room with saws, grinding equipment and materials. Dedicated crushing room housing jaw crushers (alumina and steel), alumina disc mill, and shatterbox and Spex ball mill, both with alumina vessels.
SAMPLE PREPARATION
Mineral Separation and Microsampling
Wilfley table, Franz Magnetic Barrier Separators; techniques for lithium metatungstate separations fully developed; microscope stations for handpicking. New Wave Research/Merchantek Products Micromill for high resolution microsampling of minerals and glass at the micron scale; produces powders for isotopic and other geochemical analyses.
COMPUTATIONAL GEOLOGY
Geology Computer Lab
Departmental computer lab for teaching and research; hosts discipline-specific software. Seats 40 users.
