Understanding the history of rocks by the use of microbeam analysis techniques

In order to understand the physical and chemical processes that occur in complex systems such as geological materials, one needs to look at the minerals involved on as fine a scale as possible; studying the mutual relationships among the different phases in terms of texture, chemical composition, zonation, etc., in the original petrographic context. This paper reports how the study of a rock through microanalysis can be done. The potentialities of the various microanalytical techniques such as electron microprobe analysis (EMPA), cathodoluminescence (CL), particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and accelerator mass spectrometry (ASM) are presented. Each of them has its own characteristics and limits. And only through a multiple-technique approach it is possible to investigate the various components of the rock system and from this, unravel its history.