Complete Fission Track dating facilities are available at the FU Berlin. We have a fully equipped mineral separation laboratory for concentrating apatite and zircon. Facilities for mounting, polishing, and etching samples are in collaboration with University of Potsdam. We host a Zeiss © Axioplan 2 microscope with a maximum magnification of 1250 x paired with a Drawing Board VI ©, stage control, LED courser mouse and the FT Stage © software for counting and length measurements. Data record and …

The Environmental Mineralogy 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 both crystalline …

The lab is equipped with a Leica DMR microscope with a drawing tube, a Kinetek computer-driven stage, a Calcomp digitizing tablet, and FT Stage software. A video camera is mounted on the triaxial head of the microscope, allowing a group of people to observe a slide simultaneously. At present, we are only analyzing apatites. However, we plan on analyzing zircons in the future.

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 …

The Laboratory for Dendroclimatology aims to reconstruct the temporal and spatial variability of the climate of the past utilizing multi-parameter tree ring analysis and to assess and verify the causes of climate change and its impact on woody plants.

The following tasks are covered:

• quantitative analysis of the climate-signal transfer from atmosphere through soil and leaf into the wood of tree rings (Monitoring, calibration and verification of tree ring parameters vs. instrumental …

The laboratory for microscopy focuses on the specific requirements of microfacies analysis of lake sediments, but also offers a wide range of possibilities for other applications. Sedimentological, petrographic and microfacies analyses on all kinds of covered and uncovered thin sections and polished sections with transmitted and incident light are performed.

Tephra, the Greek word for ash, is used to describe any material that is ejected by a volcano into the atmosphere (pyroclasts). Tephra includes dense blocks and bombs (> 64 mm), and lighter materials such as scoria, pumice and ash (< 2 mm). As one moves away from a volcano, the tephra deposits become finer grained (smaller particles) and thinner. This is because small airborne particles hover longer and stay within the atmosphere for a greater distance from the volcano. These particles of ash …

The microscopic analysis of microfossils or sedimentological specimens is part of the basic training in palaeontology. Microfossils are often not visible in the field with the naked eye or a magnifying glass. Nevertheless, in order to determine whether a rock contains microfossils, thin sections (slices of rock a few tenths to hundredths of a mm thick) are made from a rock sample, in which cross-sections of microfossils may be visible under the microscope. The microfossils can be obtained 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 cameras

We also have the 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, where liquid passes through. During a sample run, images of the flow are taken with a camera, …

Sample preparation instruments are available for all kinds of samples for scanning electron microscopes and transmission electron microscopes: Gold-Palladium Sputter Coater - Leica; Carbon Coater - Leica; Cryo Sample Preparation - Leica; Gatan Model 656 Dimple Grinder - a precision tool used to mechanically produce dimples in the surface of materials like ceramics, semiconductors and metals; Gatan Model Duo Mill 600 - a post-ion milling device used to prepare electron transparent specimens for …