In the age of EVs, wind turbines, solar panels, and rechargeable batteries for just about every device we use, lithium and other critical minerals have become valuable commodities.  

Funding acquired recently by UFV’s Luminescence Dating Laboratory may help identify locations in Canada to mine for these minerals.  

Dr. Olav Lian, director of the lab, has received funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to effectively double the instrumental capacity of his lab. CFI awarded Olav the full amount he requested in August, and these funds were later matched by other sources, including UFV.   

So how can luminescence dating procedures help find mineral sources? It all comes down to the stories told by ancient grains of sand.   

Olav is a world leader in the scientific technique which is used to determine the last time mineral grains buried in sedimentary landforms were exposed to sunlight.  

As geochronologists, Olav and his associates view time very differently than many of us; they do this by studying the physical environment as it has changed over the millennia by analyzing long-buried grains of sand using a technique called luminescence dating, which allows one to date when grains of sand buried within a landscape were last exposed to sunlight — or when that landscape was last unstable. 

Minerals absorb radiation from the environment, and this energy is stored in them as long as they are buried and kept in the dark. Stored energy can be released with exposure to sunlight (setting the ‘clock’ to zero) or it can be released and measured in the laboratory under controlled conditions. The intensity of its luminescence (light) is proportional to the amount of time the mineral has been buried.   

Working collaboratively with other geoscientists, and colleagues in other disciplines, Olav and his team have used the method to measure the effects of long-term environmental (climate) change at sites all over the world. The method can also date artifacts from archaeological sites by determining how long those artifacts have been buried in a landform, such as an ancient river floodplain.   

Olav’s new work centers around drift prospecting. If you find a sedimentary deposit like the bed of a glacier that existed during the last ice age, or an ancient river floodplain, you can find out where that sediment came from, and track minerals back to the ore bodies they were eroded from.  

Drift prospecting has a long history in Canada. The way it’s done now, glacial sediment samples are analyzed using complex and expensive geochemical laboratory methods.  

Olav believes luminescence may provide a better way.  

“It has long been known that the colour of light emitted from irradiated minerals, when they are stimulated by heat or by light of a different colour (energy), varies with the type of mineral, or even with the same kind of mineral,” he explains. “We are investigating whether a luminescence signal, or a collection of luminescence signals of different colours (luminescence emission spectra), can be used to more efficiently detect these minerals in bulk samples.”  

“The motivation for our research is based on observations made more than 30 years ago by researchers in the UK who used an emission spectrometer to measure the various colours of luminescence emitted as a sample is heated. They found that quartz minerals from different geological origins had different emission colours (spectra) and that changes due to lithium content could be detected. This gave us the idea that this technique could potentially be used to identify critical minerals.”  

Olav is delighted to report that the new instrument is currently being built in Denmark and will arrive at UFV in 2025. 

The new instrument funded by CFI will not include an emission spectrometer, so initial research will focus on luminescence signals. Emission spectrometers are expensive, and Olav wants to first assess its utility by working with another laboratory. To that end, he also applied for and received a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance International Grant. With that grant, Olav will send Dr. Samual Woor, a postdoctoral fellow, to the physics department at Danish Technical University (DTU) near Copenhagen to work with one of the scientists who helped develop the spectrometer.   

“If the initial experiments at DTU look promising, we will apply for an NSERC Research Tools and Instruments Grant next year to obtain our own spectrometer,” Olav says.  

A key requirement of the grant applications was showing a benefit to British Columbians and Canadians in general.  

“It’s meeting the needs of partners in government and industry, and it puts UFV on the map as a leader in this area,” says Dr. Garry Fehr, Associate Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies. “We know the mining will be done more sustainably here than it would be elsewhere, while creating more jobs.  

“And with the increased capacity at UFV, we can keep work in Canada instead of sending it off to the U.S. or Australia or elsewhere. This will create more skills training and learning opportunities for our students to engage in meaningful research that may have short- and long-term benefits for our province and country.”  

UFV’s Luminescence Dating Laboratory focuses on both research and on teaching. Many students, from undergraduates to PhDs and postdoctoral fellows, have cut their research teeth in the lab over the past two decades. Research output (journal publications and conference presentations) has been a team effort, with students playing an essential part.   

Olav’s lab is the only one in Canada west of Montreal. Doubling its capacity at a time of increasing demand creates more opportunities to train students in an area that’s growing, and Olav makes sure to involve as many UFV undergrads as he can in the work. Dr. Maria Schaarschmidt, a postdoctoral fellow who is leading several of the lab’s research projects, has been an asset for student training and mentoring, Olav notes.  

Click here for more on UFV’s Luminescence Dating Laboratory.