PIs: Dr. John Diemer and Dr. John Bender

The XRD/XRF laboratory contains a Rigaku Miniflex+ X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and a Jordan Valley EX-3600 X-ray fluorescence (XRF) system. The Rigaku XRD is a robust, compact, portable instrument with a built-in goniometer. It is operated by a Dell GX 260 computer system with MDI JADE 6.5 software capable of searching for and matching peaks of more than 5000 minerals in its database. The XRD can be used for the analysis of minerals in rocks, sediments, soils and man-made materials such as fly ash.

The Jordan Valley XRF is capable of analyzing elements from fluorine to uranium in concentrations ranging from a few ppm up to high weight percents in rock and soil samples. Rock and soil samples are ground into homogeneous powders and then pressed into pellets for trace element analysis. For major elements, the powdered samples are mixed with a lithium metaborate flux, melted and cooled as a homogeneous glass disk.