VU Amsterdam Selects Admaflex Ceramic 3D Printing Over The Competition

CLIENT

The department of Earth Sciences at VU Amsterdam studies the Earth as a fully coupled system with emphasis on the interactions between the geo-, hydro-, bio-, cryo-, and atmosphere. Their main goal is to improve the understanding of the process that ultimately shape our planet and affect our daily lives.

These research efforts require a complex Earth system approach of both an experimental and theoretical nature. VU Amsterdam uses state of the art in-house and field laboratories, complemented with a suite of modelling and Earth Observation tools to achieve research goals.

CHALLENGE

Melt Inclusions (MI) are small droplets of silicate melt that are trapped in volcanic minerals during their growth from magmas, originated at depth within the Earth’s mantle. Researchers at the Earth science department of VU Amsterdam study these Melt Inclusions to retrieve chemical and physical characteristics of magmas at the moment of their origin.

The small melt droplets carry the DNA of deep magmas and can help to understand how continents and ocean islands in the ocean’s floor form. In order to properly study Melt Inclusions, they need to be in homogeneous state and consist only of glassy melt.

Unfortunately, >90% of naturally homogeneous trapped melt inclusions have undergone post-entrapment modifications during cooling, including partial to complete crystallization of the melt.

In these cases laboratory heating is needed to return the MI to its original homogeneous melt state, followed by rapid quenching of the melt to produce a homogeneous glass phase before microanalysis can be undertaken.

This requires specialized equipment which is very difficult to manufacture.