MRI: Acquisition of LA-HR-ICPMS instrumentation for climate, environmental, ecosystem, and engineering research at the University of Maine

该合同是为了采购新的仪器，以支持采购新的LA-HR-ICPMS仪器，用于各种环境样品的痕量元素分析。该仪器将取代原来安装在缅因大学气候变化研究所（CCI）的ThermoScientific Element2 ICP-MS（已经大量使用了20多年）。此次收购将大大扩展CCI/ICP-MS设备的研究能力，以改进对水样品的分析，并补充了用于冰、生物和其他固体材料的激光烧蚀（LA）前端。目前的ICP-MS设施是在2002年获得NSF/MRI奖后建立的，从那时起，它就成为了美国缅因州大学气候、环境、生态系统和工程研究和培训的重要资源，遍及缅因州和其他州。该设施的日常使用和主要支持来自主要调查员及其合作者，他们分为三个研究领域：冰川化学和气候/环境重建；古海洋学与海洋生物地球化学；以及环境传感器开发和材料科学工程。缅因大学是该州的陆地和海洋拨款大学，也是唯一的博士学位授予机构，因此校园实际上是缅因州的学术研究和研究培训中心。这项研究和培训仪器的进展将立即影响当前和未来nsf资助的研究项目，这些项目支持广泛的国内和国际合作。具体而言，我们将与威尼斯大学（意大利）和剑桥大学/英国南极调查局合作开发冰芯激光消融ICP-MS成像，并与新西兰、瑞士、中国、加拿大和巴西的同事合作分析冰，从而保持我们在全球冰芯和气候变化研究中的领导地位。同样，Element XR碳酸盐分析能力的增强将对美国国家科学基金会资助的缅因湾和南太平洋的研究项目产生直接影响。拟议的仪器将促进学术学院（自然科学学院，林业和农业学院和工程学院）和研究单位（CCI和前沿传感器技术研究所）之间新的和重要的合作，以及与缅因州其他学术和科学机构进行新的和更广泛的科学合作。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is for acquisition of new instrumentation to support acquisition of the new LA-HR-ICPMS instrumentation for the trace-element analysis of various environmental samples. This instrumentation will replace the original (and heavily used over two decades) ThermoScientific Element2 ICP-MS installed at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute (CCI). The new acquisition will significantly expand research capabilities of the CCI/ICP-MS Facility to improve the analysis of aqueous samples, supplemented with a laser ablation (LA) front end for ice, biological, and other solid materials. The current ICP-MS Facility was established in 2002 with an NSF/MRI award, which since then has served as a vital resource for climate, environmental, ecosystem, and engineering research and training at the U. Maine, across the state of Maine and beyond. The routine use and primary support of the Facility come from the Principal Investigators and their collaborators that group under three research areas: glaciochemistry and climate/environmental reconstruction; paleoceanography and marine biogeochemistry; and environmental sensor development and material science engineering.The U. Maine is the State’s Land & Sea Grant university and only PhD granting institution, so the campus is the de facto academic research and research training hub of the state of Maine. The proposed advances of this research & training instrumentation will immediately impact current and future NSF-funded research projects that support extensive national and international collaborations. Specific to this proposal are collaborations with the University of Venice (Italy) and the University of Cambridge/British Antarctic Survey to develop laser ablation ICP-MS imaging of ice cores, and collaborations with New Zealand, Swiss, Chinese, Canadian, and Brazilian colleagues to analyze ice, thereby maintaining our leadership role in global ice core and climate change research. Likewise, the enhanced carbonate analysis capacity of the Element XR will have an immediate impact on NSF-funded research projects in the Gulf of Maine and in the South Pacific. The proposed instrumentation will facilitate new and important collaborations between academic colleges (College of Natural Science, Forestry, and Agriculture and the College of Engineering) and research units - the CCI and the Frontier Institute for Research in Sensor Technology - across the campus, as well as enabling new and broader scientific collaborations with other academic and scientific institutions across Maine.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.