Facilities

    Dr. Jacobson is building two new laboratories at Northwestern University: A Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory and an Aqueous Geochemistry Laboratory. Both laboratories will comprise part of a shared analytical facility in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences that will support complementary functionalities in stable isotope, organic, and sedimentary geochemistry.

    The Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory will consist of a state-of-the-art clean room and a Finnigan Triton MC-TIMS recently funded by the Major Research Instrumentation program at NSF. The combined value of the laboratory will exceed $2M. The Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory will emphasize the analysis of Ca, Nd, Os, Sr, Th, and U isotopes to support research in aqueous geochemistry, ground and surface water hydrology, chemical oceanography, paleoceanography, geomicrobiology, chemostratigraphy, and climate change, both modern and ancient.

    Northwestern University has contracted PicoTrace to build the Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory. The main chemistry laboratory and instrument room will be entirely metal-free and will meet or exceed class 1000 conditions. All work areas, including hoods and counter tops, will meet or exceed class 10 conditions. The main chemistry laboratory will contain seven exhausting horizontal laminar flow workstations for chromatographic separations, sample evaporations, rock digestions, and other procedures. Additional equipment will include corrosion-free hotplates with time-temperature controllers, a pressure digestion system, sub-boiling stills for acid purification, microscopes, high-precision analytical balances, and a Millipore Milli-Q Element water purifier coupled to an Elix20 RO-EDI pre-treatment system.

    The Aqueous Geochemistry Laboratory will emphasize the elemental analysis of rocks, soil, water, biologic materials, and experimental laboratory solutions. Major equipment will include a Thermo Fisher iCAP 6500 ICP-OES and a Dionex DX-1000 IC. The laboratory will also contain a range of auxiliary equipment commonly employed in wet chemical research, including balances, pH meters, centrifuges, water baths, and drying ovens.

    Dr. Jacobson’s research in the field of geomicrobiology utilizes the Microbiology Laboratory in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. The Microbiology Laboratory contains standard microbiology and molecular biology equipment, including an autoclave, sterile HEPA-filtered benches, centrifuges, PCR workstations, and DGGE and gel electrophoresis equipment. The laboratory also houses a Flx800 Bio-Tek microplate reader spectrophotometer, a Zeiss epifluorescent microscope equipped with a digital camera, and an upright Zeiss LSM510 confocal scanning laser microscope equipped with a META detector and a variety of laser lines. A 63X water immersion objective is available for in-situ studies of fully hydrated, undisturbed biofilms.

    Lastly, specific projects employ electron microscopes in the Electron Probe Instrumentation Center (EPIC) in the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at Northwestern University. EPIC offers an array of analytical techniques, including high spatial resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, atomic-resolution imaging, convergent beam electron diffraction, and digital spectrum acquisition in TEM and electron backscatter diffraction pattern analysis in SEM. The SEMs include an EO Gemini 1525, a Hitachi S3500N-II, a Hitachi S4800-II, and a FEI Quanta environmental SEM. The TEMs include a Hitachi H-8100, a Hitachi HF-2000, and a JEOL JEM-2100F.