Application form – NanoSIMS facility at Utrecht University

To apply for the measurement time at the NanoSIMS facility at Utrecht University, you need to fill out this form and send it by email to L.Polerecky@uu.nl. Please pay special attention to the billing details, as we cannot allocate measurement time for you without these details.

Once we receive this form and familiarize ourselves in detail with the objectives of the nanoSIMS analysis for your project, we will make you an offer of possible time slots and costs for your analysis. The costs will be calculated based on the list of services you apply for (see page 5) and the corresponding prices.

Note that in addition to nanoSIMS measurements, we also offer additional services that may be useful for you when preparing your samples or when processing your data. We offer these services either through our nanoSIMS facility or through other facilities at Utrecht University (such as GeoLab). These services involve additional costs.

It is our experience that your allocated time can be most efficiently used if the measurements are combined with a preliminary data analysis. In practice this means that the data for a specific field of view (FOV) is processed and evaluated practically immediately after it has been acquired by the instrument, which makes it possible for you and the instrument operator to make educated decisions about the next measurement. We highly recommend that you do this, as it substantially increases the number of FOV's analyzed per day as well as the overall quality of the data.

Clearly, you are the one who can make the best decisions about what and where on your sample should be measured next. Therefore, we advise you to learn how to process nanoSIMS data before you start with the actual measurements. This data analysis can be done using our free analysis software Look@NanoSIMS. You can download this software (together with a manual) at no extra cost from our website and install it on your computer. The software requires Matlab to run, so you will also need to have Matlab installed on your computer. If you do not have Matlab, we offer an extra computer that you can use to analyze your data while waiting for the next measurement to be finished.

If you feel that you would benefit from training on how to use Look@NanoSIMS, we offer an intensive course after which you should be able to efficiently perform preliminary analysis of your data. You can also decide that we perform this preliminary analysis for you. However, if this were done by the nanoSIMS instrument operator, be aware that it would decrease the valuable time that the operator can spend on measurements. Alternatively, it can also be done by the scientific head of the facility. However, this will involve extra cost. This is why we advise you to do this “on-the-fly” preliminary analysis by yourself.

Our primary objective is to generate high quality data. We do it either as part of a scientific collaboration or as a service with no scientific involvement. It is important that you specify which of these two models you wish to apply during your measurements. In both models we guarantee that the obtained data is of as high quality as our instrument allows us to achieve. If you choose the first model (“scientific collaboration”), we ask you to agree that the head of the facility will be included as a co-author on publications that will result from the data collected by the facility. In this case, we will perform the final detailed analysis of all the data collected and present it to you in a form that, if conclusive, can be used for publishing. We will do this with your help and advice but at no additional cost. If you choose the second model (“service with no scientific involvement”), we assume that you will analyze and interpret the data by yourself. We can perform such analysis for you, but it will involve additional costs. In both models you will, of course, be able to keep the collected raw data for any further analyses that you may decide to do in the future.

Please use this template to complete your proposal Save the file as PROJECT_ACRONYM-Your_Name-Date.doc and e-mail it to Dr. Lubos Polerecky.