Earth Materials (EM)
Select topics in mineralogy and petrology, both pure and applied aspects, e.g. properties and uses of clay minerals, zeolites in nature and industry, stability of minerals.
Information: Prof. Sergey Churakov (Bern) or Prof. Esther Schwarzenbach (Fribourg)
Main aspect of the Specialization Earth Materials within the master curriculum of Earth Sciences is multidisciplinarity between geology and material sciences. In the past, graduates specialized in this field accepted positions in industry and research institutes dealing with refractories, glass, cement, clays, gem stones, or other crystalline solids of technological importance for multiple applications. In addition to this specialization master students are also encouraged developing fundamentals for general geological tasks.
All fields of profession cited above cover the research areas of general and applied mineralogy and petrology. The spectrum summarized in Earth Materials spans from structure and properties of minerals to genesis of magmatic and metamorphic rocks. Multidisciplinarity within the domains geology-physics-chemistry provides students with skills to deal with technological applications of minerals and rocks.
The intention of this Specialization aims to provide skills for investigating and characterizing minerals, rocks, and other crystalline solids, with special emphasis on their properties. This also includes developing models on formation and stability of rocks and minerals, synthesis of corresponding materials under laboratory conditions, and testing possible applications in technology and ecology.
Each student writes a guided research thesis on a topic of ongoing investigation at the University of Fribourg or Bern or at partner institutions (university, government, industry). This project may involve any combination of field, laboratory and/or computational work. The thesis work is conducted over the entire 2-year period of the MSc curriculum, parallel to coursework, thereby allowing time for in-depth understanding of the research problem and methods.
One or more supervisors are drawn from the team of lecturers or from partner institutions. During the first semester the student studies the literature and presents an oral and written research proposal. The remaining three semesters and one intervening summer period (free of coursework) are devoted to fieldwork or industry internship, collecting and analysing data and to writing up the results. The thesis work terminates with oral and written presentations at the end of the fourth semester. The MSc thesis may be written in English, French or German.
MSc students have access to a wide range of modern analytical facilities at the host institute, including state of the art single-crystal X-ray equipment enabling structural characterization at high and low temperature (100 to 850 K), powder X-ray diffraction equipment for structural characterization up to 1400 K, petrographic microscopy, cathode-luminescence, scanning-electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, electron microprobe, Laser-Raman and FTIR spectroscopy, Laser-ablation-ICP-MS, fluid inclusion microthermometry, rock porosity and permeability apparatus, wet-chemical laboratories with atomic-absorption and ion-chromatography, mass-spectrometers for stable isotopes of C, O and H, and for radiogenic isotopes of the K-Ar, Rb-Sr, Nd-Sm, U-Pb, Ca, Mo and He systems. Experimental equipment includes porewater extraction devices, flow-through reaction vessels, exchange columns, hydrothermal autoclaves for high P–T studies and special high temperature furnaces for crystal growth and solid state reactions. Computational facilities include computer clusters for geochemical modelling and GIS applications. Additional facilities are available at BeNeFri partner universities and at collaborating research institutes.