HELGES – Sample Preparation Laboratories

Samples of all kinds are pretreated in our sample preparation laboratories. Samples are usually first dried, sieved or separated into magnetic or non-magnetic components in a magnetic separator based on their magnetic properties. Separation based on different mineral densities is also carried out here. Rock samples are ground in a ball mill and then further processed in the clean room laboratory using wet chemical methods.

In the case of cosmogenic nuclide samples for the in situ-produced ¹⁰Be, the samples are purified in several stages in order to obtain pure quartz. For this purpose, various leaching steps are carried out with different acids (HCl, HNO₃, HF) and at different temperatures on a heatable roller or in ultrasonic baths in order to obtain a quartz concentrate that is as clean as possible.

For marine samples, microfossils are often separated using microscopes. Our microscope enables us to optically analyse thin sections and the like, take overview images and prepare them for laser measurements. In addition to polarisation filters and incident/transmitted light, there are objectives for magnification factors of 5x, 10x, 20x, 50x and 100x.