Facilities and Instruments

The LUC operates a number of facilities at PSI and offers analytical services.

  • Modular electromechanical and thermal ice drill for high-alpine glaciers (maximum 200 m depth)
  • Backpack drill for shallow cores (15 m)
  • Battery drill for horizontal cores
  • Rigid “Patagonia-proven” drilling tent
  • Cold room (-20°C)
  • Class 100 clean benches
  • Continuous ice-melting device (CIM)
  • Ion Chromatography (IC): Major inorganic and organic ions
  • Wavelength-Scanned Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy (WS-CRDS): Stable isotopes δ18O and δD
  • Inductively Coupled Plasma Sector Field Mass Spectrometry (ICP-SFMS): Trace elements
  • Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry (AFS): Hg
  • alpha-Spectroscopy: 210Pb dating
  • Access to a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2): Black Carbon
  • Access to combustion systems (THEODORE, SUNSET): OC and EC
  • Access to Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS): 14C dating

We perform chemical analyses using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). With the ICP-OES concentrations of up to 70 elements in liquid samples can be analysed.