Acquisition and Implementation of a Cameca SX-100 Electron Microprobe Laboratory, University of Oklahoma

University Of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman OK

Investigators

Abstract

This award will fund the upgrade of a used, 5-spectrometer Cameca Instruments SX-100 that was decommissioned by Sandia National Laboratory and which the principal investigators claimed from surplus through DOE's Laboratory Equipment Donation Program. Along with other essential lab components, this award will bring this instrument to fully operational status, which will ensure that this regional facility remains open and ready for use well into the future. Equipment to be funded includes a new operational personal computer (PC), a PC-based automation package, associated firmware, a silicon-drifted solid-state energy-dispersive x-ray analyzer with Peltier cooler, and upgrades to the evaporative coater. Regular users of the facility come mostly from geology, but faculty members and students of anthropology, other natural sciences, and engineering are frequent and sometimes lengthy users. Examples of research to be enabled by the upgraded instrument include: experimental studies of isotope chemistry H and F among garnet, tourmaline, and silicate melts, experiments to define a stability field for kimzeyite, a Zr-rich garnet, and studies of crystal nucleation and fabric in silicate liquids.