An NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant to Gerbi, Johnson, Grew, Koons, Belknap, Kreutz, Lux, and Yates allowed for the purchase of the equipment in the new laboratory, established in Spring 2009. The lab consists of the following major equipment:

The SEM lab work area. For class presentations, a ceiling-mounted projector can display any of the three monitors on the far wall.

• Tescan Vega II XMU tungsten filament scanning electron microscope
  • high vacuum low vacuum (pressures from 5-2000Pa) modes
  • backscatter, secondary electron, and low vacuum secondary electron detectors
  • resolution, depth, and wide-field imaging modes
• EDAX Pegasus system
  • energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS) with an Apollo40 SDD
  • electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) with the Digiview IV camera
• Gatan ChromaCL system: live color cathodoluminesence (CL) imaging
• Rotary and vibratory polishing equipment

Calcium map of a portion of a granulite facies rock. The map was generated with the EDS system.

Damage halo in quartz surrounding a zircon grain imaged by live color CL. The radiation from uranium to lead decay in the zircon has affected the quartz structure sufficiently to alter its cathodoluminescent properties.

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