Geochemistry – Mineralogy Platform:
- Sample preparation:
- Handling of air-sensitive and CO2-sensitive samples, pellets preparation
- Stirred hydrothermal reactors
- Acidic digestion, handling of HF, isotope purification
- Cutting, polishing, embedding, coating (Au, C)
- Separation of clay fractions, oriented deposition, milling powders…
- Analytical chemistry:
- Major and Traces in solution
- Monitoring in situ
- Carbon/Nitrogen
- Mercury (Hg, MeHg)
- Synthesis and solid-solution interaction
- Solid phase characterisations
Microanalysis platform:
- Electronic microprobe JEOL JXA-8230
- Preparation of micro-samples
GEODATA Service:
- Satellite data, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)
- Geophysical Data Centre
- Data mining
- Satellite data, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR)
GIS - Geophysical Instrumentations (for observations and for experimentations):
- Geophones & seismometers
- GPR/ Radar
- Magnetometer
- GPS
- Electrical resistivity/conductivity
Geo-thermo-chronology (GTC):
- Rock-crushing and pulverizing:
- Jaw crusher (Dragon Babitless)
- Disk pulveriser (Fritsch)
- Agate crusher (Tema industrie/Siebtechnik) fine granulometry for geochemical and X-ray diffraction applications
- Sieving columns (40 μm-2 mm grain size separation)
- Gemini shaking table (separation of light and heavy minerals)
- Laboratory oven for drying samples
- Extraction of cosmogenic nuclides, composed of two rooms to maintain a high level of quality and security conform to international standards:
- A pre-treatment room dedicated to the purification of crushed samples. The samples are sorted by magnetic separator (Frantz) and by a series of mechanical process and chemical etching.
- A chemical laboratory dedicated to the purification of beryllium (or aluminium) samples by separation in ion exchange columns and by etching.
- Mineral separation:
- Magnetic separation
- Density liquids
- Fission Track (FT) thermochronology:
- An automatic polisher (PRESI Mecatech 334)
- 2 binoculars
- 2 optical microscopes
- 2 microscopes Olympus with automatic stages XY, FTStage 4.04 et a camera Olympus for fission track analysis
- 1 microscope Olympus SZX16 (with optional camera), for samples preparation for (U-Th)/He analysis
Terre is a joint research unit comprised of 300 people. It operates under the supervision of the CNRS, (University Grenoble Alps, University Savoie Mont Blanc, French National Research Institute for Development / French institute of science and technology for transport, development and networks), and is subsidiary of Observatory of Earth Sciences and Astronomy of Grenoble and of PAGE, a research centre of Grenoble-Alpes University.
It is a leading laboratory for Grenoble's Universe Sciences Observatory (OSUG) whose research focuses primarily on the physical and chemical study of the planet Earth. By combining observations of natural objects, experimentation, and the modelling of complex phenomena, ISTerre strives toward a deeper understanding of Earth's major internal systems.
Organized in 10 research teams, the primary goal of this research unit is the physical and chemical study of the planet Earth through a combination of observations of natural objects, experimentation, and the modelling of complex processes.
ISTerre also supports observatory missions of solid Earth, is home to a centralised database, and maintains multiple national catalogues of geophysical instrumentation.