X-Ray Laboratories
(Rooms 413 to 418 Wallace Building)

The X-Ray Diffraction Laboratory in the Department of Geological Sciences, along with the Microbeam Laboratory, is a well-equipped facility that is widely viewed as the leading lab of its type in North America, if not the world. The scientists that use the lab are involved in a wide range of Earth and environmental science problems, from bond topology to exploration for rare metals to the behaviour of uranium in the environment.

The laboratories have pioneered the coupled application of crystal-structure refinement and electron-microprobe analysis to the understanding of complex rock-forming minerals and environmentally important secondary minerals. The labs have initiated systematic crystal-chemical studies of uranium minerals applied to aspects of nuclear waste disposal, sulphate minerals as components of acid-mine drainage and secondary lead and arsenic minerals in order to understand and ameliorate the transport and deposition of these toxic metals in the environment.

The X-Ray laboratories are located in Rooms 413 to 418 of the Wallace Building. The X-ray facilities include:

• Bruker D8 microdiffractometer with X-Y-Z motorized stage, Hi-Star 2D multi-wire detector and 6kW rotating anode generator. 
• Bruker APEX II Ultra single-crystal diffractometer with 6kW rotating anode generator.
• Bruker P4 four-circle single-crystal diffractometer with CCD detector.
• Siemens D5000 powder diffractometer.
• MDI Jade data processing software
• ICDD Powder Diffraction File (PDF-4) and ICSD crystal structure databases.

• Horiba Jobin-Yvon LabRAM ARAMIS Laser Raman microprobe.
• Bruker Tensor 27 FTIR spectrometer and Hyperion 2000 IR microscope with video mapping and motorized x-y stage.
• Wissel Mössbauer spectrometer for 57Fe spectroscopy.
• SeeCo Mossbauer spectrometer with micro point source for single crystals

Laboratory Manager: Neil Ball (na_ball@umanitoba.ca)
Laboratory Technician: Mark Cooper (mark_cooper@umanitoba.ca)