This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
With this award from the Major Research and Instrumentation (MRI) program, Peter Williams, Ariel D. Anbar, James R. Anderson, Richard L. Hervig and Willem F. Vermaas will acquire an imaging secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) instrument. This novel and powerful instrument will be used to support an extended group of researchers working on diverse topics involving both soft (biological) materials and hard materials (minerals), and at the interface between the two (biosensors, antibiotic clays, nanoparticle toxicity). The projects have in common the need for chemical, and in particular isotopic, analysis at length scales below conventional SIMS instrumentation. The research will impact fundamental research and underpin applied research widely. It will yield insights in a number of areas including studies of the early stages of life on earth, and fundamental studies of metabolism in photosynthetic organisms and biosynthetic pathways for lipid formation. Studies to improve the efficiency for biofuel production in a process that recycles waste carbon dioxide from power stations will be investigated. The chemistry and origins of aerosols will be undertaken and thus contribute to the understanding of atmospheric chemistry and global warming. The study of volcanic magma may yield time-resolved information about magma conditions in the hours and days before eruption, aiding prediction of these cataclysmic events.
An Imaging Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer probes the chemical composition of surfaces and thin films. A surface is bombarded with ions prepared in an ion source. This dislodges material from the surface which is analyzed by the mass spectrometer. The ion beam will also scan over the material giving an image of the surface. This allows researchers to correlate the chemical composition with the properties of hard materials (e.g. minerals) and soft (e.g. cells) at the nano scale level. The interdisciplinary studies that will be carried out using this instrument will have an impact in materials research, chemistry, biology, geology and atmospheric science. The undergraduate and graduate students who will use the equipment in their research projects will be trained in imaging science with state of the art instrumentation.
has been installed at Arizona State University. This instrument generates secondary ions from the surface of an analytical sample by bombardment with an energetic primary ion beam focused to a spot smaller than 50 nanometers. The secondary ions, containing information about the chemical and isotopic makeup of the sample, are mass-analyzed in a specialized high mass resolution mass spectrometer capable of detecting up to seven ion species simultaneously. By rastering the primary ion beam over the sample surface, chemical and isotopic images of multiple species can be obtained. This instrument is particularly valuable in teasing out sub-micron scale chemical or isotopic variations that would be obscured in a bulk analysis that averaged together a larger region of the sample. The diversity of applications of this instrument is exemplified by: (a) discovery in a meteorite of a mineral grain roughly 200 nanometers in diameter whose oxygen isotope pattern signals its pre-solar origin in a nearby low-mass star; (b) measurements of the differential uptake of ammonium compounds by individual bacteria, harvested from Yellowstone hot springs, that may resemble the earliest life forms on Earth; (c) measurements of sulfur isotope ratios in individual cloud-seeding aerosol particles to try to differentiate the origins of the particles and thereby to improve our understanding of cloud formation, one of the major variables in climate change. The NanoSIMS is now part of a national facility that will be available at a manageable cost to researchers across the USA. To date two proposals have been funded to support work on the instrument and a further eight, involving researchers at six universities, are in preparation or under review.
