SEM lab in Nanoengineering
Facilities at SIO
Shared Optical Microscopy Lab (located in Sverdrup Hall at SIO) - click here for info
Trace Metal Geochemistry Lab (located in Sverdrup Hall at SIO) - click here for info
The SEM Lab on upper campus houses a brand-new, state-of-the-art field emission gun SEM (FEI Apreo LoVac). This FEG-SEM is equipped with EDS and EBSD detectors:
Oxford Instruments X-MaxN 80 sq mm large area analytical Si-drift EDS
Oxford Instruments AZtecHKL Symmetry EBSD
In addition to standard high vacuum, the FEI Apreo LoVac sample chamber can be run in low vacuum mode (up to 500 Pa) for imaging and analysis of non-conductive samples.
Large-area EBSD mapping of geological thin sections
Below are some examples of maps done using our SEM:
Thin section (roughly 1 x 2 inches) of porphyroclastic peridotite (plane-polarized light).
Thin section (roughly 1 x 2 inches) of kyanite garnet quartzite (plane-polarized light).
IPF - inverse pole figure, which shows a specific sample direction (here, Y) within the crystal reference frame.
EBSD phase map: cyan = quartz, blue = garnet, magenta = kyanite, mustard = K feldspar