Geochemistry Thread Ties Multidisciplinary Research Together
Geochemistry Thread Ties Multidisciplinary Research Together
UT’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) has long been at the forefront of geochemical research, both terrestrial and planetary. Our students and faculty continue this tradition of excellence today with a wide variety of research topics, in both low- and high-temperature geochemistry, and we continue expanding our research capabilities through new faculty hires and acquisition of new analytical instruments. Understanding the chemical composition of geologic materials is a thread that runs throughout our department and is a key touchstone that unites our disparate research programs.
The Stable Isotope Laboratory, headed by Associate Professor Anna Szynkiewicz, provides stable isotope services for research and commercial users. The laboratory has two Thermo-Finnigan Delta mass spectrometers and a variety of peripheral devices that enable the measurements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur isotope ratios in a variety of materials, including rocks, sediments, water, and gas samples. These tools allow researchers to investigate questions related to how nutrient cycles function under different conditions, reconstructing paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic conditions, human impacts on water resources and land use, and much more. Since 2014, the laboratory has been used for isotope analysis by many UT faculty, postdocs and students, and non-UT research groups studying geology, planetary analogs, biology, microbiology, and many environmental topics.
The Electron Microprobe Laboratory, headed by Associate Professor Molly McCanta, provides high precision geochemical analysis of solid geomaterials, including mantle xenoliths, volcanic tephras, Apollo samples, Martian meteorites, and experimental samples. The Cameca SX-100 electron microprobe is an analytical workhorse and heavily utilized by the faculty and students studying petrology, structural geology, and sedimentology in EPS, as well as the greater university community and researchers from other schools in the region.
Our newest analytical facility is our ICP-MS lab, headed by Associate Professor Shichun Huang, hosts a ThermoFisher ScientificTM iCAP TQ Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS), and an ESL 193 nm Excimer NWR193 laser ablation system. The wet chemistry lab is equipped with a Milli-Q Integral Water Purification System, and a Savillex DST-1000 Acid Purification System. With such facilities, this lab provides elemental abundance measurements of almost all non-volatile elements in both natural and synthetic samples, ranging from water/ice, soils to silicate rocks. The detection limits can be as low as ppt to ppb level, depending on the sample matrix. The external reproducibility is typical at several percentage levels, but can be pushed to 1% level if needed. The ICP-MS lab serves not only faculty and students in EPS, but also users from inside and outside of UT.
In addition to the research labs above, EPS is home to the Environmental Geochemistry Teaching Laboratory, initiated by Annette Engel, our Donald H. and Florence Jones Professor of Aqueous Geochemistry, and now facilitated by Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator Maggie Chen. It provides equipment to train student users in the analysis of water samples for chromophoric organics, major cation and anion analyses, the analysis of atmospheric gasses, and the analysis of trace metals in solution. This lab offers students, both undergraduate and graduate, experiential training on state-of-the-art analytical tools and the ability to conduct classroom-based and independent research.
With such robust major labs and associated minor equipment, our faculty and students conduct research at the leading edge of science that truly pushes the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Whether we are investigating the chemical composition of meteorites, weathering products of Precambrian granites or Apollo-returned lunar samples, characterizing water quality in Third Creek, identifying the chemical composition of fossil echinoderms, or analyzing sulfur fractionation in Icelandic hot springs as analogs for Martian environments, geochemistry is one touchstone that brings our department together.