Transmission Electron Microscopy Investigation of the Microstructure of Biogenic Calcites
Fossilized foraminifera produced by living organisms provide a continuous record of paleo-seawater temperatures. Investigating the microstructure of foraminifera is essential for understanding the diagenesis processes of biogenic calcites. This project mainly employs transmission electron microscopy and synchrotron X-ray diffraction techniques, including diffraction-contrast imaging, electron diffraction, scanning transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and strain, domain calculations. Via these advanced techniques, it is expected to figure out the phase structure, defects density, texture, elemental mapping, organic inclusions in different species of foraminifera, which will provide substantial submicron- and even nanometer-scale microstructure parameters to facilitate the reconstruction of the paleo-seawater temperature.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Advanced Grant (AdG), PE10, ERC-2017-ADG (Grant agreement No. 788752).
Scientific collaborators on this project include:
- Alain Baronnet (Aix-Marseille University)
- Sylvain Bernard (Sorbonne Université)
- Lukas P. Baumgartner (University of Lausanne)
- Deyanira Cisnero-Lazaro (EPFL)
- Damien Daval (University of Strasbourg)
- Jinming Guo (EPFL)
- Olivier Grauby (Aix-Marseille University)
- Anders Meibom (EPFL)
- Jarek Stolarski (Polish Academy of Sciences)
- Torsten Vennemann (University of Lausanne)
