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Welcome to the NanoSIMS Home PageInformation about the new ion microprobe at Washington University |
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Pictures |
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Photos from the Open House April 2002 Detailed pictures of the NanoSIMS and its components Pictures from the arrival in St. Louis and the installation in the lab - December 2000 |
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Links |
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The manufacturer of the
NanoSIMS Local Links Other Stuff |
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Contact |
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Email: JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address.
Laboratory for Space
Sciences Phone: Fax: |
© F.J. Stadermann 2004
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Two year retrospective |
June 2004 |
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In the last two years our work with the NanoSIMS has been very successful. The downtime due to hardware problems went down dramatically and with the help of our own development efforts, we are now able to use the instrument for a large variety of scientific studies. Several significant discoveries in the study of presolar grains and IDPs have been made with the NanoSIMS in the short time this instrument has been available. This has resulted in numerous publications from our group, including four that were published in the journal Science (DAULTON et al., 2002; FLOSS et al., 2004; MESSENGER et al., 2003a; NGUYEN and ZINNER, 2004a). Interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) are primitive samples of extraterrestrial material with a fine-grained heterogeneous matrix. We have used the NanoSIMS for extensive studies of the C, N, O, Mg/Al, Si, and S isotopic compositions of these particles on a sub-micrometer scale (FLOSS and STADERMANN, 2003; 2004; FLOSS et al., 2004; MESSENGER and KELLER, 2002; MESSENGER et al., 2003a; 2003b; STADERMANN and BRADLEY, 2003). This work led to the discovery of presolar silicates (MESSENGER et al., 2003a) and the first observation of C isotopic anomalies in these particles (FLOSS et al., 2004). Most recent results include the discovery of presolar corundum in IDPs (in preparation) and of presolar phases in Antarctic micrometeorites (in preparation). Combined mineralogical and isotopic studies of presolar grains on TEM grids were used for the determination of SiC polytype distributions (DAULTON et al., 2002; 2003) and for the detailed characterization of high-density (CROAT et al., 2004; STADERMANN et al., 2004a) and low-density (CROAT et al., 2003a; 2003b; STADERMANN et al., 2002; 2003; 2004b) presolar graphite spherules and their sub-components. The latter project included O and Ti isotopic measurements of 100 nm sized 'presolar grains within presolar grains'. Other lines of investigation looked at the O isotopic compositions of presolar spinel grains (ZINNER et al., 2002a; 2003b; 2004), as well as the C, N, and Si isotopic compositions of small SiC and Si3N4 particles (ZINNER et al., 2002b; 2003a). We used the multi-collection and combined mode capabilities of the NanoSIMS for C, N, O, Mg/Al, Si, K, Ca, and Ti isotopic studies of individual presolar graphites (AMARI et al., 2002; 2003a; 2004) and for C, Si, and Ti isotopic measurements in presolar SiC grains of type X and Z (AMARI et al., 2003b). High-resolution NanoSIMS O isotopic imaging of >70,000 densely packed oxide grains was used to identify several hundred presolar spinel and corundum grains (NGUYEN et al., 2003a; 2003b; 2003c). A similar imaging study of grain size separates from Acfer 094 led to the discovery of presolar silicate stardust in meteorites (NGUYEN and ZINNER, 2004a; 2004b). Some development work using the St. Louis NanoSIMS has been done in collaboration with CAMECA to quantify the aging characteristics of the new miniaturized electron multipliers (SLODZIAN et al., 2003) and to evaluate the 'QSA' effect (SLODZIAN et al., 2004). NanoSIMS imaging was used for test measurements of elemental distributions in aerosol particles (EBERT et al., 2004). |
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NanoSIMS Workshop in Boston |
September 2003 |
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Claude Lechene of Harvard organized a first NanoSIMS workshop in Boston during September 2003. The official title of this gathering was "Multi-isotope Imaging Mass Spectrometry Workshop" and it brought together users of the different NanoSIMS instruments and other interested colleagues. It was a nice opportunity to exchange experiences with this new analytical technique and to discuss technical details with CAMECA and Georges Slodzian, on whose original design concept the NanoSIMS is based. The workshop web page at Harvard has information about participants and their presentations. In addition, the slides from my presentation can also be found locally: |
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Additional Fields of Research |
August 2003 |
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One main part of our research will always be the laboratory analysis of extraterrestrial materials and we have already demonstrated in many ways (see list of publications on the right) that the NanoSIMS has unique capabilities which make it well suited for such studies. The NanoSIMS, however, has many applications in other fields of research, as well. We have therefore started various collaborations with colleagues from our university and beyond, who require the excellent lateral resolution of the NanoSIMS for their own not space-related studies. We have already begun to make proof-of-concept measurements on a wide variety of samples. The most promising fields so far seem to be studies of individual aerosol particles and the isotopic analysis of microbes. Several research proposals by external colleagues are currently under evaluation that include use of our NanoSIMS in these fields. |
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Walker Symposium |
March 2003 |
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Robert M. (Bob) Walker has been the leader of our group for as long as anybody can remember and his vision has shaped so many aspects of our work. It was his combination of scientific instincts, steadfastness and enthusiasm which made the acquisition of the NanoSIMS possible. In order to honor and to thank him, we organized a scientific symposium that focused on the main themes of his scientific life and the work that has been carried out under his leadership as director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. The Walker Symposium brought many current and former colleagues and students together and gave everybody a chance to see what is currently going on in this research group and with the NanoSIMS.
Update: Robert M. Walker died on February 12, 2004 in Brussels. (Walker web page, Record article) |
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New Web Site |
January 2003 |
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I have completely redesigned this NanoSIMS web site. This is something that was on the agenda for a long time already and now it is finally here. This page is not complete yet, so expect to see changes for a few weeks until all the little formatting problems have been worked out. I am not doing web design for a living, so please bear with me. Here is the basic idea behind the new layout: Under the header box of this window are three columns with text boxes. The left column holds somewhat permanent items. There are links to other web pages, both locally and on other servers, as well as contact information. The column on the right is for all publications that are based on measurement done with our NanoSIMS instrument here in St. Louis. The list is not yet complete, but it already shows that we have been quite successful with this new instrument. I will try to complete this list with time. Every publication will be downloadable as a pdf file from here, as long as the journals or scientific conference rules allow this. The central column (where this text is located) is reserved for individual items of interest. Everything here is sorted by date and the newest items will always be added at the top, pushing everything else further down. Once this page gets too long, there will probably be an archive page for older items, but we are still a while away from that. |
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List of Other NanoSIMS Groups |
November 2002 |
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CAMECA has been fairly successful with the marketing of this new type of ion microprobe. We are using our instrument mostly for the analysis of extraterrestrial materials and more general geologic applications, but the unique features of the NanoSIMS make it an interesting microanalytical tool for several other fields as well. Especially in material science and bio-medicine appear to be important applications for the NanoSIMS. I have added a new page with descriptions and links to other NanoSIMS groups. Since the instrument is still so relatively new, it is important to maintain contact between different NanoSIMS users, so that we can learn from each other. |
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NanoSIMS Open House |
April 2002 |
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On April 5, 2002 we held an open house to celebrate the successful operation of the NanoSIMS, to introduce the instrument to our colleagues and to thank all of those who have made the acquisition possible. The event consisted of a brief introduction into the history and the technical aspects of the NanoSIMS, followed by tours of the laboratory with food and drink. The Open House was attended by more than 100 people. |
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What is going on with the NanoSIMS? |
March 2002 |
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The NanoSIMS is now up and running in St. Louis for about a year and we are getting to know it better and better every day. Since this instrument was the first of its kind we were not really sure what to expect for the beginning. Although we had performed all kinds of tests while the instrument was being assembled by CAMECA in Paris,we did not know how everything would work out when the instrument was actually in our lab and we were really on our own. Well, of course there were problems and that was not really too surprising, but the really good news is that we got most of it under control now and that the NanoSIMS is indeed capable of performing all of those measurements we always wanted to do. In the first year since the installation we have been able to do lots of exciting science with the instrument and we have done a multitude of measurements that would not have been possible with any other kind of instrument. This success really became obvious at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. This is one of the biggest annual scientific meetings in our field and we were able to present many of our new NanoSIMS results to our colleagues for the first time. All the contributions from our group are listed on the 2002 abstracts page and of the 19 presentations shown there, 8 are based on measurements that were done with the NanoSIMS. The extended, 2-page abstracts of all of those contributions can be downloaded from there. |
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Technical Details |
February 2001 |
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The NanoSIMS is a complex instrument. There are more than 200 parameters to adjust for a multicollection NanoSIMS measurement. Here are a few pictures of the hardware and an overview of the instrument's basic ion optics. |
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Installation |
December 2000 |
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The worldwide first NanoSIMS instrument passed all acceptance tests in Paris in October 2000 and was then packed up for delivery to St. Louis. The big day of arrival was a snowy 01-December-2000. The NanoSIMS came came in four large wooden boxes and survived the transport without any major problems. It took a few weeks to get everything installed and tuned up, but then all of a sudden it was really here and ready to be used. |
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