Welcome to the website for the IGGRC at Carleton University. Here you will find information about our facilities, who we are, what we do and how to access our laboratories. We hope that you find these pages informative, but if you have any questions, please contact us and we'd be more than happy to answer them.
Click here to visit the official IGGRC website
We measure isotopic variations in certain elements in geological and environmental materials. By interpreting the variations we can add to the understanding of how our planet has evolved. Elements we're interested in include uranium, lead, samarium, neodymium, rubidium, strontium and thorium, but just recently we've been able to expand our capabilities to include calcium and boron, and soon we'll be adding rhenium and osmium to the list.
For a basic description of isotope geochemistry and mass spectrometry,click on this link; http://iggrc.carleton.ca/about-us/mass-spectrometry-overview
Our facilities include Class 100/1000 clean chemistry labs, a Triton thermal ionization mass spectrometer, and a Neptune multi-collector ICP mass spectrometer. For a brief tour of our isotope facilities, see video below.
If you're also interested in research utilizing the 'traditional' stable isotopes of carbon, oxygen and sulphur, you may wish to visit the web page of our sister laboratory, the Jan Veizer Stable Isotope Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. They're also part of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre. Together, we have among the very best facilities for geochronology and isotopic research in Canada.
Contact Information
Shuangquan Zhang
IGGRC Laboratory Manager
(613) 520-2600 Ext. 6311