THE GROWING ROLE OF NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY IN PETROLOGY: HELP FROM VIRGINIA TECH’S NATIONAL CENTER OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL NANOTECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE (NANOEARTH)

The fields of petrology has been creeping towards higher and higher imaging and analytical resolution for several decades, instrument by instrument, component by component. Besides the steady advance of our favorite tools seemingly each year, new tools and tool components have also appeared and been improved upon. The final frontier in all this, of course, lies in the burgeoning fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, which can be thought of as being dramatically submicron (typically below 0.1 microns, all the way to roughly 1 nanometer, or 0.001 microns. Although not presently available to mass spectrometers in any practical sense except via nanoSIMS which can go down to roughly 50 nanometers lateral resolution, modern FIBs and high resolution TEMs can provide phase analysis (atomic structure identification and major/minor element composition, including oxidation state information and high quality and efficient mapping) well below 10 nanometers resolution. These accomplishments are beginning to be used in petrology.

In order to facilitate the more general use of nano-capable instruments, methods, and technical staffing, the National Science Foundation, through the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program, has funded one dedicated center among the 16 national NNCI sites that is fully dedicated to the Earth and environmental sciences. This is Virginia Tech’s National Center of Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure, or NanoEarth for short (http://www.nanoearth.ictas.vt.edu/), and its partners. Opened to outside users in October of 2015, it has already served a few hundred visitors and users in many aspects of nanoscience that play some role in Earth processes. In terms of petrology applications, NanoEarth is particularly strong in FIB/HRTEM/EELS technologies and analyses, combinations (at this level) that are rare due to the high cost of purchase and maintenance of these instrument sets, but they are also incredibly useful. Nevertheless, user fees remain low, and financial aid if available when needed. The future of nano-petrology is ultimately centered on understanding how chemical and physical behaviors at the nanoscale deviate from bulk behavior, and how this can be used to understand the formation and evolution of rocks.