Laboratory Facilities

FE-SEM with BSE, EDS and EBSD: This facility was funded by an NSF award “MRI: Acquisition of a Variable Pressure Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscope for STEM Research and Education”, which was awarded August, 2018 (Webb was a co-PI). The instrument is a Zeiss Sigma 300 VP Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM). The instrument features both a variable pressure mode and in-column deceleration to provide low voltage operation down to 20V and 1.2-nm resolution at 20kV. The instrument includes back-scattered electron (BSE) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) detectors, and a state-of-the-art Oxford AZTech EBSD system that enables grain orientation mapping and merging of chemical and crystallographic orientation maps at the microscopic scale.

Other facilities and equipment include:

• • Nikon AZ100 Multipurpose Zoom Macroscope with episcopic, diascopic, and coaxial illumination systems for both thin section petrography and handpicking of minerals

  • Nikon DS-Fi1-U2 High Resolution Color Digital Camera

  • Nikon Labophot Polscope

  • Shared rock preparation room (jaw crusher, disc grinder, oil and water saws, etc.)

  • Gemeni Table for water density separations

  • Mineral separation facility with two fume hoods

  • Frantz Magnetic Barrier Laboratory Separator

  • Mettler Toledo AB 135-S/Fact Balance (31g/120g X 0.03mg/0.1mg)

  • Trimble GeoXT 2008 Submeter GPS with Tempest Antenna and post processing software*

  • GSSI GPR System: SIR 3000 data acquisition unit, 200 and 400 MHz antennas (including 4W cart and survey wheel)*

  • GSSI  Profiler EMP-400 with Trimble Recon PDA/GPS*

  • ArcGIS, GSSI RADAN processing software & interactive 3D module, Surfer (Golden Software), etc.*

*Equipment purchased with funds from NSF DUE 0941255 Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement grant, "Collaborative Research: Field-based Projects Exploring Geophysical Methods, with Applications to the State of Vermont".