The USC Dornsife Plasma Laboratory for Atmosphere, Solid earth, and Marine Analyses (PLASMA) provides access to instruments and technical support services for scientists at the University of Southern California and for the wider Southern California region. See below for more information about our instruments, along with pricing information and a sample intake form in case you are interested in running samples in the facility. For more information please contact Lab Supervisor Shun-chung Yang (shunchuy@usc.edu) and Professor Seth John (sethjohn@usc.edu).

Neptune high-resolution multi-collector ICPMS for stable isotope analyses.

Agilent 8900 triple-quadruploe ICPMS for multi-element analyses.

Agilent 5200 ICP-OES for rapid analysis of major elements.

Fee structure

Hourly fees for using the PLASMA facility cover the cost of Ar, consumables, and instrument maintenance; fees begin when the plasma is lit and end when the plasma is turned off.

Novice also pay a daily rate for assistance from a skilled laboratory technician. During this training period, the technician will help to set up the instrument, develop new methods, and train the user to become self-sufficient at running the instruments independently. The Training fee is $100/hour, and the daily maximum is $750 (= 7.5 hour).

After initial training, users may run without continuous supervision by a lab technician, though until they become an expert instrumentalist they may still pay a setup fee so that the technician can set up the instrument for analysis at the beginning of each day. The setup fee is $100/hour. It normally takes ~2-3 hours for the Neptune, and 1 hour for the QQQ and the OES.

Additional technician time will be billed at a rate of $100/hour, for example with help preparing samples or running analyses without a user on-site.

Intake information

If you are interested in using the facility, please email Seth and Shun with the following information.

Name of person filling out form:
Institution and department:
Primary contact person for this study:
PI associated with this project:
Financial point of contact for invoicing:
Email addresses for all correspondence about this study:
Describe what sorts of samples you wish to analyze (e.g., preconcentrated seawater; acidified filtered stream water; purified human blood):
What are the major dissolved constituents of the sample, for example do they contain dissolved sugars, or salts? What is the approximate total dissolved solids content?
Have these samples been filtered, and if so how?
Have the samples been acidified, and if so, how:
Target elements/isotopes:
What is the expected concentration of the target analytes in your samples?
Approximate number of samples to be analyzed:
Instrument to be used (Agilent 5110 ICP-OES, Agilent 8900 QQQ ICPMS, Neptune MC-ICPMS, Not sure):
Nebulizer type (Quartz, PFA, Not sure):
Inlet system (Quartz spray chamber, APEX Q, APEX Omega, Not sure):
Cone setup (Jet/x, Jet/h, Non-jet/x, Non-jet/h, Not sure):
Please tell us a little more about the project. For example, what are your scientific goals? What are you hoping to learn from these analyses? How will these samples fit into a larger scientific project?

Please note:

The PLASMA facility provides use of instruments and technical support in setting up analytical runs, but we are not a full-service analytical lab with regards to producing finalized data. It is the responsibility of the users to choose the analytical methods and protocols which will yield high-quality data for their unique application, and to perform all post-processing of raw data for finalization. We are always willing to offer friendly advice on an ad hoc basis, and users have the option to pay for technical support for methods development. But final responsibility for data quality lies with users.