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 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.

Various binocular and polarization microscopes are used to study mineral separates, and rock thin sections. Additionally, a micro mill for high‐resolution milling to recover sample powder for chemical and isotopic analysis is available.

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, …

The preparation lab offers different preparation methods such as thin-section production, polishes, dye methods, hardening methods and others.