Sample Preparation Facilities

The Digital Fission Track Laboratory is supported by a comprehensive suite of sample preparation facilities that cover the entire workflow from initial rock crushing through to final mount polishing. These facilities ensure the production of high-quality, reproducible mounts for fission track and related thermochronology analyses. We have experience handling all types of geologic and geologic samples and can prepare mounts for later use on LA-ICPMS, SEM, EPMA, TEM and Raman systems including the ability to add coordination points and generate coordinate files.

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Rock Crushing and Mineral Separation

Our laboratory houses dedicated equipment for efficient and precise mineral separation from bulk rock samples:

• Rock crushing and pulverising equipment prepares fresh surfaces and reduces samples to the appropriate grain size for mineral separation.

• A Wilfley shaking table is used for gravity separation, efficiently concentrating heavy minerals such as apatite, zircon, titanite, and monazite.

• A Frantz magnetic separator enables precise separation of minerals based on their magnetic susceptibilities, providing clean separates of target accessory minerals.

• Heavy liquid separation techniques (SPT, DIM) are employed to achieve high-purity concentrates, using density contrasts to isolate minerals of interest while removing unwanted phases.

This suite of separation methods allows us to extract high-quality mineral grains suitable for fission track analysis and complementary geochronological techniques.

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Mount Preparation and Polishing

Once target minerals have been isolated, preparation moves to our specialised sample-mounting and polishing facilities:

• Struers Accutom-100 precision cutting machine enables highly accurate sectioning of mounted samples with minimal damage. Its programmable feed speed and automatic cutting functions ensure reproducibility and preservation of delicate mineral surfaces.

• Struers LaboForce-100 automated specimen mover provides controlled, reproducible polishing pressure, ensuring consistent results across multiple mounts. This system is particularly valuable for preparing large batches of samples with uniform surface quality.

• Struers RotoPol-4 / RotoForce-4 system (Roto-4) is used for automated grinding and polishing. With programmable speed and force control, it achieves the perfectly flat, scratch-free surfaces required for high-resolution fission track imaging.

Through these combined systems, mounts are progressively polished using diamond suspensions down to sub-micron finishes. This ensures optimal track revelation during etching and clear imaging under high-powered optical systems.

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Coating

If required, polished mounts are given a thin gold coating in an Emitech K550X sputter coater. This enhances surface reflectivity for automated optical systems, while maintaining sufficient transparency for transmitted light microscopy. This can also be used to add conductivity across the sample for SEM imaging.