The United States Navy has transferred NAUTILUS, a one-of-a-kind system for materials analysis, to the University of Notre Dame. The transfer occurred during a ceremony held at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey F. Rhoads, vice president for research and professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, said, “We are so grateful for our long-standing relationship with the United States Navy. For over 80 years, we have worked together with a shared mission to serve our country and its people, and today is just another example of Notre Dame and the Navy working together to drive innovation for the betterment of the United States.”

Rhoads added that “the transfer of NAUTILUS to our campus in South Bend is not only a generous gift, but it will be an impactful one. At Notre Dame, our researchers will steward it well, using it to explore and discover new knowledge as they advance their research and lean into our research ethos of doing good in the world.”

The name NAUTILUS stands for NAval Ultra-Trace Isotope Laboratory Universal Spectrometer. Unlike other spectrometers, NAUTILUS combines two separate processes for materials analysis. It uses secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) analysis along with single-stage accelerator mass spectrometry (SSAMS). The addition of SSAMS makes NAUTILUS over 10 times more sensitive than commercial SIMS instruments.

Philippe Collon, professor and associate chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained, “NAUTILUS excels at detecting impurities in a material. It enables what you might call ‘needle in a haystack’ work. But instead of a needle in a haystack, imagine detecting a single bottle of pollutants poured into Lake Michigan — then you have an idea of the kind of extremely precise analysis this instrument is capable of.”

NAUTILUS’ unique capabilities will augment the University’s existing research expertise. As part of one of the world’s longest-running particle accelerator research programs, Notre Dame currently operates several low-energy accelerators.

By transferring NAUTILUS from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., to South Bend, the U.S. Navy will foster collaborative research with Notre Dame faculty members while also making new connections with other universities and national laboratories that will be able to now use NAUTILUS at the University.

“This transfer, authorized by Congress and facilitated through educational partnership agreements, is more than a mere exchange of equipment,” said Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a 1984 Notre Dame graduate. “It is a commitment to fostering further innovation and research that can be applied to Naval and national security challenges, enhancing collaboration between government and academia and strengthening America’s competitive advantage in the global scientific arena.”

Notre Dame researchers said they plan to integrate NAUTILUS into several existing research projects.

For example, Collon will use NAUTILUS to understand the processes that formed our solar system, while Clive Neal, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, will use NAUTILUS to bring a new dimension to his lunar samples. Amy Hixon and Antonio Simonetti, both associate professors in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, will use NAUTILUS to test samples from the Ewing Mineral Collection at Notre Dame.

Once NAUTILUS is operational in its new home on Notre Dame’s main campus, it will be the center of a new University-wide research facility managed by the College of Science, the College of Engineering and Notre Dame Research. Researchers from the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP) and ND Energy will serve as frequent collaborators, and NAUTILUS will also be available to research groups from outside the University.

According to Collon, some of the biggest benefits of NAUTILUS’ presence at Notre Dame will be for students.

“The next generation of STEM researchers are going to be tasked with doing a more careful analysis of material with smaller and smaller samples to detect things like very advanced forgeries, for example. Students who work with NAUTILUS can learn a comprehensive set of techniques — how to understand ion optics, how to run an accelerator, how to analyze its data and how to optimize tests. That is training we will now be able to offer to our undergraduate and graduate students using this one very advanced piece of equipment.”

To learn more about nuclear science at Notre Dame, visit isnap.nd.edu.

Originally published by Brett Beasley at news.nd.edu on August 18, 2023.

Geologist Tony Simonetti had taught his Planet Earth students how to take strike and dip measurements in the classroom, but now a theory had turned into reality. He poured water on the angled rock mountainside to identify the exact direction of the dip angle, which reveals the strike plane in a perpendicular direction.

“Doing it in the field is so much more …,” said Higgins, searching for the right word. “I’m a very hands-on learner, so it just made me understand.”

Taking strike and dip readings, Simonetti said, helps a geologist understand a region’s tectonic history — the massive underground forces that thrust up the mountains and stretched out the valleys over millions of years. Seeing firsthand the results of these tectonic plate collisions is exactly why the associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) took 16 undergraduates and two graduate students to Death Valley National Park and Red Rock Canyon for a one-credit field trip over spring break.

To read the story, click here.

Originally published by Brendan O'Shaughnessy at news.nd.edu on April 22, 2022.

According to Peter C. Burns, Henry J. Massman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, director of the Center for Sustainable Energy at Notre Dame and co-author of the study, structural complexity of minerals can be measured by bits per unit cell. The average is about 228 bits.

“Minerals at 1,000 bits are considered very complex, but only about 2.5 percent of known minerals receive that designation,” said Burns. “In comparison, ewingite measures at 12,684.86 bits per unit cell, essentially doubling the measuring stick that mineralogists currently use.”

Ewingite was found on a damp mine wall in the Czech Republic and was in the same region where uranium ore was mined for Marie Curie’s groundbreaking studies of radioactivity a century ago. Curie’s studies resulted in the discoveries of the elements polonium and radium, which had been in the rocks for a long period of time. Ewingite had likely only grown over decades, after humans began interacting with the mine.

“Humans have done a pretty good job at interfering with the planet’s natural processes by digging into Earth’s surface and releasing chemicals into the atmosphere,” Burns said. “Our next step with this research is to confirm whether or not this extremely complex mineral could have even existed if humans had not opened and exposed the mine to air and water. This is important for understanding what effect human involvement is having on Earth’s other geological processes.”

Burns and his team are working with the Carnegie Institute to gather all existing data on uranium-based minerals to see if they can find variations between minerals that may or may not have been impacted by human existence. Additionally, the Burns lab is attempting to recreate the mineral to better understand the conditions that led to its formation.

Ewingite was named in honor of Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford University, for his contributions to the fields of mineralogy and nuclear science. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences program and led by Travis A. Olds as a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame. Olds is now a postdoctoral scholar at Washington State University.

Contributors to the study include Yu-Sheng Chen of the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources at the University of Chicago; Anthony R. Kampf of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Jakub Plásil of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; Luke R. Sadergaski, graduate student of CEEES at the University of Notre Dame; and Antonio Simonetti, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of CEEES at the University of Notre Dame. This research team also utilized the Materials Characterization Facility and Midwest Isotope and Trace Elements Research Analytical Center at Notre Dame to conduct the study.

Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director, media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

Originally published by Brandi Klingerman at news.nd.edu on March 07, 2018.

Scientists have found a key indicator in determining whether the presence of carbon, found in the Earth’s mantle, is derived from continental crust – a step toward better understanding the history of crustal formation on Earth’s surface and the rate at which tectonic plates have moved throughout geologic time, which can be linked to the cooling of Earth’s mantle.

Results of a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience show evidence of varying ratios of boron isotopes in igneous rocks, known as carbonatites, of different ages. The research was led by Antonio Simonetti, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

Three theories exist regarding the source of carbon found within the Earth’s mantle: It is of primordial origin, formed during the creation of the planet 4.56 billion years ago; it is a result of planetary collision; or it had been present in marine environments or continental crust, and recycled back into the mantle in areas of subduction, where tectonic plates shifted, one diving beneath the other.

“Our most important finding is that the Boron isotope ratios are highly variable, indicating that the source of carbon within the mantle changed with geological time on Earth,” Simonetti said. Studying the ratios of boron isotopes within carbonatites, researchers are closer to determining which hypothesis applies to specific moments in geological time.

“During the past 4.56 billion years, the subduction rate has varied,” said Simonetti. “Early on, during the first 2 billion years or so, Earth’s mantle was much hotter than it is today, so when subduction did occur, the diving plate did not penetrate as deep into the mantle as it does today because of the higher temperature. During the last 2 billion years or so, a cooler mantle has allowed the subducting plate to dive deeper into the mantle and provide the opportunity to store recycled crustal materials at greater depths, and possibly all the way down to the core-mantle boundary.”

This preliminary investigation into the boron isotope compositions of carbonatites from significant periods in Earth’s history allows Simonetti and his team to monitor long-term temporal variations — creating a clearer picture of crustal formation over time, with the potential to go as far back as several billion years.

The study was co-authored by Samuel R.W. Hulett in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame, E. Troy Rasbury of Stony Brook University N. Gary Hemming of Queens College — CUNY. It appears in Nature Geoscience.

Contact: Antonio Simonetti, 574-631-6710, simonetti.3@nd.edu

Originally published by Jessica Sieff at news.nd.edu on November 09, 2016.

Antonio Simonetti has been granted the Citizen’s Award for Exceptional Service from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Read more: https://engineering.nd.edu/news-publications/pressreleases/simonetti-receives-usgs-service-award.

Originally published by Nina Welding at news.nd.edu on May 06, 2016.

The geologist/chemist uses laser-based instruments to measure isotopes, the nuclear variations of a chemical element, to determine how and where rock formed. But geologic history isn’t the only secret he unlocks.

Using “isotopic tracer techniques,” Simonetti has helped a police department “fingerprint” a gun involved in a murder investigation, matching the spent bullets to residue in the gun barrel. Skipping through time, he’s also helped archaeologists identify the origin of copper artifacts and pottery in North America, and figure out whether the mummies found at a burial site in southern Egypt were of native people or of those who had migrated there.

His latest crime scene investigation may be his most important. This past fall, Simonetti and colleagues Peter Burns, a geology professor and director of Notre Dame’s Energy Frontier Research Center, and Amy Hixon, an assistant professor of geology, received a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to develop a database of uranium’s isotopic signatures, the unique ratio of isotopes in each sample.

Uranium ore varies worldwide — uranium mined in North America, for instance, will have a different ratio of isotopes than uranium mined in Asia. That variation offers a unique signature or fingerprint to identify the material, Simonetti explains. And Hixon is examining such things as how exposure to water and air change the various uranium ores over time and what impact that has on their isotopic signatures.

Knowing the signature is key, Simonetti says, because it can reveal not only where the uranium ore originated but also where the material, which is used in nuclear weapons, was processed. “Because of the way uranium is separated in the weapons manufacturing process, the isotope composition is known by every nuclear-producing country,” he says. “So once it’s measured and matched, there’s no denying [the source].”

Normally, any work involving nuclear weapons is top secret, conducted by a government laboratory. This research is intentionally unclassified to serve as a warning to malicious or careless producers and illicit traffickers of nuclear materials. It also provides Homeland Security with a tool to identify the source of any nuclear material that rogue states or terrorists might smuggle into or use to threaten or attack the United States. The International Atomic Energy Agency has recorded nearly 2,500 trafficking incidents reported by participating countries since 1993.

“It’s a way for the U.S. government to put any would-be aggressor on notice,” Simonetti explains. “It’s a way to say to the bad guys, ‘Look at this. We have this expertise of deciphering nuclear-weapons material. So if you try to attack us, we will know where the bomb components were mined and manufactured, whether in North Korea, Iran or wherever, and we can take appropriate action.’ Hopefully that knowledge will serve as a deterrent.”

The uranium database project is a continuation of earlier nuclear forensic research by Simonetti and Burns. Previously, at the behest of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the pair worked to develop forensic methods to identify material generated in a nuclear blast.
The Notre Dame researchers studied trinitite, a radioactive substance composed of the melted sand and other material formed from the world’s first atomic bomb blast in 1945 at the Trinity test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. “The idea was to pull trinitite apart chemically and isotopically to show people that we can identify signatures of the bomb within this relatively simple geologic background,” Simonetti says.

Like the current project, that research was intentionally unclassified in the hope that it, too, would serve as a deterrent.

A new discovery by researchers from the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences could change prevailing assumptions about the chemical makeup of the Earth’s mantle.

Antonio Simonetti, an associate professor in the department, and his doctoral student Wei Chen worked in cooperation with Vadim Kamenetsky of the University of Tasmania, Hobart (Australia) to learn the art of conducting chemical and mineralogical analyses of melt inclusions within crystals of the mineral magnetite (Fe3O4).

Simonetti points out that the magnetite crystals are hosted within igneous rocks (rocks resulting from the melting of the Earth’s mantle) referred to as carbonatites.

Antonio Simonetti

“The latter are an exceptional and intriguing type of igneous rock since they are composed primarily of calcium carbonate, or Calcite-CaCO3, rather than silicate minerals, which are the predominant minerals in the Earth’s crust and oceanic rocks,” Simonetti said. “Despite the small number of carbonatite occurrences worldwide compared to their volcanic counterparts in the past and present day, carbonatites continue to receive considerable deserved attention because of their unique enrichment, relative to crustal abundances in incompatible trace elements, such as niobium and the rare Earth elements.”

To date, most of the geological community believed that the sodium- and potassium-rich magmas being erupted at the Earth’s sole active carbonatite volcano at Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania were unique, since all other carbonatite occurrences worldwide are dominated by calcium-rich carbonate or calcite.

In an attempt to resolve this question, Wei sought to determine the initial melt composition that gave rise to the Oka carbonatite complex, which is located in southeastern Quebec.

“We approached this issue by examining the nature and chemical composition of melt inclusions within individual magnetite crystals present in carbonatites,” Simonetti said. “Melt inclusions are micron-sized ‘pockets’ present within minerals that represent a combination or mechanical mixture of co-trapped crystals and melt engulfed and isolated early in the crystallization history of the magma while the magnetite crystals were forming. Hence, investigating melt inclusions represents a powerful tool for determining the chemical composition of the initial carbonatite magma at the Oka complex.”

Wei and Simonetti’s research revealed that the chemical composition of minerals trapped within the melt inclusions at the Oka complex are alkaline in nature and similar in composition to the minerals present at Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano. The finding will have a major impact in relation to deciphering and modeling chemical processes taking place in the Earth’s mantle throughout geologic time.

“This has some significant consequences as to how earth scientists should view the overall chemical budget of the Earth’s mantle since this is where carbonatite magmas are produced,” Simonetti said. “We are not attributing enough alkalies in the region of the mantle where carbonitite melts form.”

In addition to its significance for the field of earth science, the finding also has important practical and strategic importance. Carbonatites are of critical importance in the continually evolving fields of superconductors, electronics and computing. Several countries such as the USA, China, Brazil and Canada are host to carbonatite occurrences, and there is active exploration in many of these countries to locate new deposits given the ever-increasing demand for the manufacturing of sophisticated electronic components.

The paper describing Wei and Simonetti’s research appears in the journal Nature Communications.

Contact: Antonio Simonetti, simonetti.3@nd.edu

Originally published by William G. Gilroy at news.nd.edu on November 11, 2013.

Antonio Simonetti, a research associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, is the coauthor of an important new paper describing a novel method for age dating dinosaur fossils.

Simonetti and colleagues from the University of Alberta used a U-Pb (uranium-lead) dating technique to analyze a fossilized dinosaur bone discovered in New Mexico. In a paper in the prestigious journal Geology, the researchers discuss their method and reveal that it determined that the femur bone from a giant hadrosaur dinosaur was 64.8 million years old.

The finding has caused a significant stir in scientific circles. There has been wide agreement among paleontologists that dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65.5 million years ago. Various theories as to the cause of this extinction have been suggested, ranging from a huge asteroid striking the earth to changes in global sea levels and climate to sustained periods of volcanism.

However, the method used by Simonetti and his colleagues determined that the New Mexico plant eating dinosaur was alive roughly 700,000 years after the surmised giant extinction event.

Although the challenge to the accepted dinosaur extinction model has received the most attention, Simonetti believes that the dating method described in the paper is especially significant.

The current method paleontologists use to date dinosaur fossils is a technique called relative chronology. The method estimates a fossil’s age relative to the known age of deposits of sediment in which it was found.

However, the relative chronology technique does not take into account the possibility that millions of years of geological and environmental activity can cause a fossil to drift from its original position in a layer of sediment and be re-deposited in a younger sediment layer.

The U-Pb method Simonetti and his Alberta colleagues employed uses a laser beam to sample minute particles of the fossil, which are then subjected to isotopic analysis using state-of-the-art instrumentation.

Simonetti and his colleagues believe that if the uranium-lead dating technique is confirmed in additional fossil samples, prevailing theories about the end of the dinosaurs will need to be revised.

And much of that dating work will be done in a new laboratory facility at Notre Dame. Simonetti and Clive R. Neal, a professor of civil engineering and geological sciences, have received a National Science Foundation-MRI equipment grant to establish “MITERAC” — the Midwest Isotope and Trace Element Research Analytic Center — in Cushing Hall. The facility will expand the research endeavors of 18 researchers from six universities in Indiana and Michigan, including some who will use the facility for the new uranium-lead dating technique.

Contact: Antonio Simonetti, 574-631-6710, simonetti.3@nd.edu

Originally published by William G. Gilroy at news.nd.edu on February 15, 2011.