Acquisition and Upgrade of Instrumentation for Noble Gas Geochronology and Thermochronology

这项奖励将导致安装和调试新的质谱学仪器，这些仪器将极大地增强亚利桑那州立大学(ASU)第18组实验室的分析能力。这些能力将主要用于加强对各种地球科学过程的了解，特别是主要断裂带的演化、山脉的地形演化以及活动和古代沉积盆地的沉积史。这种仪器将能够以极高的空间分辨率和精度对地质材料进行最先进的测年。除了支持亚利桑那州立大学的地球科学研究外，研究人员还致力于提供这些仪器，以支持其他大学和研究机构的科学家进行的外部联邦资助研究项目。这些文书支持的所有工作都将促进美国地球科学的发展，特别是通过研究与能源和战略性矿物资源开发以及自然灾害有关的专题。通过基于这些仪器的设计、建造和调试的免费网络教程的相关开发，以培训未来的实验室技术人员，我们希望该项目将对地球科学研究产生持久的影响。该项目涉及购买一台新的多采集器惰性气体质谱仪(Isotopx NGX-600)，该仪器将被纳入紫外线激光烧蚀微探头(UVLAMP)分析系统。该系统将异常地能够用于UVLAMP工作，这将使我们能够开发改进的显微分析方案，以非常高的空间分辨率对异常年轻的样品进行40Ar/39Ar年代学研究。该项目还包括对现有的GV Instruments Helix SFT进行电子和软件升级，以实现碎屑矿物的快速吞吐量激光消融(U-Th)/He测年。这些仪器将共同加速和改善我们的地球科学研究成果，使我们能够为更多的外部用户服务，并将扩大我们可以容纳的研究类型。我们将利用这个项目的收购部分来开发一个专门针对全国研究生的教育计划，目的是让他们了解这项工作的复杂性，并更好地了解地质年代学和热年代学的仪器方面。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award will result in the installation and commissioning of new mass spectrometry instruments that will greatly enhance the analytical capabilities of the Group 18 Laboratories at Arizona State University (ASU). These capabilities will be used predominantly to develop an enhanced understanding of a variety of geoscience processes, especially the evolution of major fault zones, the topographic evolution of mountain ranges, and the depositional history of active and ancient sedimentary basins. This instrumentation will enable state-of-the-art dating of geologic materials with extremely high spatial resolution and precision. In addition to supporting ASU geoscience research, the investigators are dedicated to making these instruments available for the support of research projects from external, federally funded research by scientists at other universities and research facilities. All of the work supported by these instruments will promote the advancement of geoscience in the United States, in particularly through studies of topics related to energy and strategic mineral resource development and natural hazards. Through the associated development of freely available, web-based tutorials based on the design, building, and commissioning of these instruments for the purpose of training future laboratory technicians, we hope this project will have lasting impact on geoscience research.This project involves the acquisition of a new, multicollector, noble gas mass spectrometer (Isotopx NGX-600) that will be incorporated into an ultraviolet laser ablation microprobe (UVLAMP) analytical system. This system will be unusually capable for UVLAMP work, which will permit us to develop improved mircoanalytical protocols for 40Ar/39Ar geochronologic studies of unusually young samples with very high spatial resolution. The project also involves an electronics and software upgrade of an existing GV Instruments Helix SFT to enable rapid throughput laser ablation (U-Th)/He dating of detrital minerals. Together these instruments will accelerate and improve our geoscience research output, will allow us to serve a larger number of external users, and will expand the types of studies that we can accommodate. We will take advantage of the acquisition part of this project to develop an educational program specifically aimed at graduate students nationwide, with the goal of providing them with a sense of the complexity of this endeavor and a better understanding of the instrumentation side of geochronology and thermochronology.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.