Facilities

The Aqueous Geochemistry and Mineralogy Group maintains a large (1250 ft²) aqueous geochemistry laboratory in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building.  These spaces includes standard wet chemical equipment, Coy Laboratory Products anaerobic chambers, UV-Vis spectrophotometer, autotitrator, muffle and tube furnaces,  crystal synthesis and polishing equipment,  Agilent Technologies model 5500 Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), capable of imaging both in air and aqueous solution, and a Thermo Trace 1310 GC for permanent gas anlyses.

Our group has also just established the Analytical Biogeochemistry Laboratory, housing a Thermo iCAP 7400 DUO ICP-OES, Thermo Dionex Integrion IC, Seal AQ 300 Discrete Analyzer, and an Elementar varioMACROcube CHNS analyzer. The Analytical Biogeochemistry Laboratory is designed to conduct water, soil, and plant analyses and is open for use by the Washington University community and researchers at nearby insitutions. Please contact Prof. Catalano for information about using this new facility.

We will soon (early 2022) receive and commissions an easyXAFS 300+ spectrometer for X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy in the laboratory. Stay tuned for more information as we plan for this to be available to outside users, including by mail, at a low cost.

An array of other analytical tools are available across campus:

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Major equipment includes: A JEOL-8200 electron microprobe, Siemens SRS-200 and SRS-300 sequential X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, Bruker d8 Advance powder X-ray diffractometer, HoloLab 5000-532 and 5000-633 Raman microprobes, and a Nicolet Nexus 670 FTIR spectrometer with ATR attachments.

Institute of Materials Science and Engineering (IMSE)
Major equipment includes: A JEOL JEM-2100F scanning field emission transmission electron microscope with electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) capability, a JEOL JSM-7001FLV field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) detector, JEOL JEM-2000 FX TEM with EDS analyzer, and a PHI 5000 VersaProbe II X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer and Scanning ESCA Microprobe.

Nano Research and Environmental Facility (NREF)
Major equipment includes: Perkin-Elmer Optima 7300DV ICP-OES,  Perkin-Elmer DRCII ICP-MS, Perkin-Elmer NexION 2000 ICP-MS, Malvern Zetasizer Nano ZS, Shimadzu TOC analyzer with solids module, Quantachrome Nova 2000e BET analyzer, and a CEM Mars 6 microwae digestion system.

The group also frequently uses a number of beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.