The hydrothermal diamond-anvil cell (HDAC) can be applied to study fluids, solids and particularly aqueous samples in situ at high pressures and temperatures. Although such cells are usually used at P-T conditions of less than 3 GPa and 850 °C, experiments with aqueous fluids to 23 GPa and 1025 °C have been reported in the literature.
Because diamonds are transparent over a large range of the electromagnetic spectrum, samples in the HDAC can in principle be studied using any "photon-in – …

In principle, an internally heated pressure vessel (IHPV) consists of a thick-walled pressure vessel sealed by closure plugs at the ends. In addition, there is a pressure inlet/outlet as well as several electrical leads into the vessel for power supply to and temperature control of the internal furnace. The equipment is particularly designed for experimental studies at medium to high temperatures (currently up to 1250 °C) and pressures up to 10 kbar. This P-T range is inaccessible by …

Optical microscopes are available in the Microscopy Lab for different techniques, such as brightfield, polarization contrast, fluorescence. The microscopes can also be equipped with the following cameras: Sony Alpha 6000 digital camera and Kern ODC-86 microscope camera.

The lab is also equipped with a FlowCam 5000 by Yokogawa, which is a particle analyzer capable of taking optical images. It is comparable to a flow cytometer and features a syringe pump and 100 x 700 µm glass capillary, …

This integrated laboratory suite is designed for studying the formation of nature-inspired and synthetic mineral phases, and their interactions with nutrients and contaminants. It is equipped with two anaerobic chamber workstations, small-scale chemostat reactor, Schlenk Line, setup for liquid degassing to remove O2, sample autodiluter for trace element analysis and standard chemical laboratory equipment such as analytical balances, centrifuges, fume hoods, hotplate stirrers, shaking …

The Environmental Mineralogy and Biogeochemistry Labs are equipped with a very diverse suite of spectroscopic and scattering instruments to determine material chemical composition, structure, surface area and grain size of both synthetic and natural samples. For instance,

• Our powder X-ray diffractometer (XRD) consists of two individual instruments capable of X-ray scattering analysis using both Cu (λ=1.54 Å) and Ag radiation (λ=0.56 Å) in transmission geometry. XRD can be used to analyze …

The laboratory is equipped with two confocal high-resolution Raman spectrometer systems to study fluid and solid samples (from single point analyses and line scans to two- and three-dimensional Raman imaging) at ambient pressure and temperature and over a wide range of P-T conditions.
Available sample environments are three Linkam heating/cooling stages and two hydrothermal diamond-anvil cells.

The section is well equipped for rock crushing, sieving and milling, preparation of thin and polished sections and grain mounts, and mineral separation by gravimetric and magnetic methods. We maintain central facilities and equipment for cleaning, crushing, sieving and grinding rock samples, both for preparation of homogenized whole rock powders and for the production of mineral separates. Whole rock powders (grain sizes < 62 μm) are typically used for X-Ray diffraction (XRD), X-Ray …

X-Ray Powder Diffractometer (XRD)

The determination of angles and intensities produced by diffraction of X-Ray radiation by mineral lattices provides information, which is characteristic for their crystalline structures. X-Ray powder diffraction is used by for identification, quantitative phase analysis and structure refinement of phases in synthesized powders. Most diffraction data is processed by the Rietveld method using the GSAS software package.
The lab includes two STOE Stadi P …

An X-Ray Diffraction analysis is a method in which a beam of X-Rays is usually directed at a fine powder of randomly oriented grains of crystalline substances. The X-Rays are scattered in directions that depend on the crystal structure of the sample and the resulting X-Ray diffraction pattern can uniquely identify the material. The method is used to identify individual minerals in randomly oriented bulk rock powder samples (grain sizes < 62 μm for qualitative analysis, < 10 μm for quantitative …