Electron Microprobe

The electron microprobe that CERG utilises is a CAMECA SX51 Electron Microprobe with SAMX Software housed within Adelaide Microscopy.

Details about the instrument can be found at the Adelaide Microscopy site.

The Electron Probe Micro-analyser (EPMA) technique has a number of advantages:

• high spatial resolution (~5 mm)
• non - destructive
• relatively quick, accessible and cheap
• in-situ analysis; textural context for an analysis preserved

EPMA is used for acqusition of compositional information from minerals.

This is useful in metamorphic studies as mineral compositions change in response to pressure and temperature variations within the crust. Mineral compositional maps are also produced using this facility, enabling us to view the chemical zonation of a mineral. This has implications for thermobarometric evolution of the mineral and hence the geologic terrane in which that mineral grew.

This technique is also routinely used for determining the age of monazite using the chemical dating U-Th-Pb method.