My laboratories occupy rooms in the North Mudd building of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. The chemistry lab, upstairs, is equipped for routine organic chemistry, including three 8-foot fume hoods, a Mars Express microwave-assisted solvent extraction system, TurboVap LV, homemade N2 blowdown system for GC vials, Labconco dishwasher, IEC benchtop centrifuge, and large-volume muffle oven. The instrument lab, 1000 feet of recently (2012) renovated space, houses several gas chromatography and mass spectrometry systems: two benchtop Thermo GC/MS systems for identifying and quantifying organic compounds; a TraceGC - Delta+XP isotope-ratio mass spectrometer for measuring 2H and 13C in individual organic compounds; an Agilent 6890 GC coupled via a home-built heated interface to a Neptune Plus multicollector inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer (MC-ICP-MS) for compound-specific 34S measurements; a Delta-V Advantage with Gas Bench and Costech elemental analyzer for measuring 13C and 15N in bulk organics and carbonates; a Delta+XL with Thermo elemental analyzer for measurements of sulfur isotopes in bulk solids; a Los-Gatos DLT-100 Liquid Water Isotope Analyzer for measuring 18O and 2H in liquid water samples; and a Virtis freeze dryer for organic-clean drying of sample materials.
Numerous other facilities are available within the Geological & Planetary Sciences Division, including:
- Two state-of-the-art Ion Microprobe Instruments (Cameca NanoSIMS 50L and Cameca IMS 7f-Geo) housed in the Center for Microanalysis.
- Instrument fabrication and electronics shops, including CNC mills and lathes, surface grinding, and PC board fabrication.
- LEO 1550 VP Scanning Electron Microscope (Division facility)
- Jeol JXA-733 Electron Microprobe (Division facility)
- Thermo 253, 253-Ultra, and DFS mass spectrometers for clumped isotope analysis (Eiler lab)
- Element and Neptune ICP-MS instruments used for trace-element and isotopic abundance analysis of solutions (Adkins lab)
- Numerous LC-MS, GC-MS, ICP, IC, and other analytical resources exist next door in the Environmental Analysis Center, which operates on a fee-for-service model.
- Routine equipment for molecular biology (including Beckman ulta-centrifuge, Eppendorf PCR machine, power supplies and boxes for gel electrophoresis, tabletop centrifuges, analytical balances, etc.) is available in the Orphan lab.
