The extraterrestrial spinel grains and fossil meteorites recovered in our projects are analyzed for chemical elements and different isotopes at some of the foremost cosmochemistry laboratories in the world.
Oxygen-three isotope analyses of the microscopic spinels are performed by two groups:
- Philipp Heck at the Chicago Field Museum and Noriko Kita at the WiscSIMS lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison use the Cameca IMS 1280 secondary ion mass spectrometer at the Madison WiscSIMS lab.
- Gary Huss, Caroline Caplan and Kazuhide Nagashima use the Cameca IMS 1280 secondary ion mass spectrometer at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Honolulu.
Noble gas isotopes (He and Ne) analyses of the microscopic spinel grains are performed with the ultra-high sensitivity noble gas mass spectrometer at the Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
The analyses are performed in cooperation with Matthias Meier, Henner Busemann, Colin Maden and Rainer Wieler at ETH-Zürich and Philipp Heck and Jennika Greer at the Chicago Field Museum.
Microprobe elemental analyses of extraterrestrial spinels in some of our projects are performed by Dan Topa at the Vienna Natural History Museum with a JEOL Hyperprobe JXA 8530F Field Emission Gun Electron Probe Microanalyzer.
For some projects we use our calibrated Oxford-Link EDS mounted on a Hitachi SEM for the elemental analyses of spinel grains. Extensive cross-calibration with the microprobe lab in Vienna secure a robust accuracy of the results.
Chromium isotope analyses of bulk samples of fossil meteorites and batches of spinel grains are performed by Qing-Zhu Yin and Matt Sanborn with the Thermo Triton Plus thermal ionization mass spectrometer at the University of California at Davis.