Istituto Nazionale Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)

INGV-RM1 Microanalytical, FESEM/EMPA HPHT Lab, Rome, Italy

The INGV-RM1 HPHT infrastructure comprises the INGV-RM1 Microanalytical Laboratory (Installation 1), that is equipped with a JEOL JSM-6500F field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and a JEOL JXA-8200 electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) and all the necessary equipment for the preparation of microanalytical samples. The JSM-6500F is a high- performance analytical FESEM integrating JEOL’s Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyser for fast elemental analysis. It offers high-resolution images of microscopic surface structures. The JXA-8200 SuperProbe is a high-resolution SEM, with five wavelength dispersive spectrometers (WDS) with 12 crystals, and an EDX spectrometer. The instrument is designed to measure the composition of a solid polished material quantitatively on a micron-scale or to generate accurate characteristic X-ray elemental distribution maps. The INGV-HPHT laboratories offer a wide range of services that are well integrated with the research activities of the infrastructure and can be summarized as follows: Microanalytical observations. INGV offers FESEM micrometre- to nanometre-scale microtextural imaging observations, major to minor element microanalytical determinations, microstructural analyses of mineral and rock deformations, and X#ray chemical mapping of natural and experimental samples. Chemical analysis of earth materials. The EPMA facility allows for quantitative characterization of earth materials by means single point analyses or 2D chemical map elemental distributions.

INGV-OV X-ray microCT lab, Naples, Italy

INGV laboratory is involved in the study of natural phenomena in volcanic, seismic and environmental risk contexts (e.g. mechanisms of vesiculation, crystallization and magmatic fragmentation, fracture propagation, circulation of fluids, alteration processes, etc). 

INGV laboratory includes a micro-ct system (Zeiss Xradia 410 Versa) equipped with a microfocus Xray source capable of energies from 40 to 150 kV, which allows the scanning of samples with a wide range of densities. The detectors are mounted on microscope objectives with magnifications ranging from 0.4X to 20X; the former yields a field of view of ~55 mm, whereas the latter yields ~1 mm. Thus the spatial resolution for the microXCT ranges from ~55 µm to 0.9 µm. The microXCT scanner also offers the advantage of enhanced phase contrast to better image materials with low mean atomic numbers.

INGV laboratory includes dedicated software for the visualization and quantitative analysis of three-dimensional digital maps and for pore-scale numerical simulations for fluid transport properties prediction (e.g. absolute and relative permeabilities).