TIMS Laboratory

The FINnish Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer (FINTIMS) facility is part of the environmental, mineralogical and geophysical laboratories at the Department of Geosciences and Geography (HelLabs). The facilities include a TIMS, a ISO Class 3 metal-free clean room facility for sample preparation including balance room, and supporting infrastructure and mass spectrometry clean room. 

The facilities are operated by a consortium of Finnish research entities, i.e. the University of Helsinki, the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), the Natural resources institute of Finland (LUKE), and the Finnish Food Authority (FFA). We welcome researchers nationally and internationally (see section Work with us).

• Isotopx TIMS Phoenix Instrument with liquid nitrogen cold trap to enhance source vacuum, positive and negative ion operation at ±8KV, 9 Faraday collectors and ATONA Amplification.
• Ultra-clean metal-free laboratory for sample digestion and isotope dilution. The clean room is ISO 3 (class 1) room and has 5 workstations, teflon coated hot plates, and an Elix 3 MiliQ system. For isotope dilution we use chromatography columns and resins by eichrom (Sr, Ln, TRU, DGA and UTEVA resins available for the separation of rare earth elements and U-Pb series)
• Balance room with a Sartorius Cubis Advanced MCA balance, and a Sartorius Quintix Pro Precision balance.

Supporting facilities

• TIMS sample loading station.
• Filament cleaning station including a computer controlled degas bench.
• Filament preparation station with spot welder.
• Savillex DST-4000 acid purification systems.
• Sample preparation Laboratories.

Access to the laboratory is being organised through application to the consortium board through quarterly proposal calls. 

Contact: