Shale exhibits extremely complex mineralogy with pores down to the 1-2 nm scale, and hydrocarbon content that varies in maturity, type, and spatial relationship to other minerals. In order to understand the total organic matter that may contribute to hydrocarbon yield and its potential accessibility, it is necessary to characterize shale core plugs across multiple orders of magnitude and additionally analyze heterogeneity at these scales.
Use guided sample site selection (search and replace all references to GS3) to progressively image over eight orders of magnitude. Register and correlate data from one length scale to another, guiding the tools as you zoom-in to capture features such as porosity, pore structure and morphology, mineralogy, and lithological texture. You can accomplish this while maintaining the spatial relationship of various datasets, capturing rock heterogeneity.
Example: a one-inch end-trim prescriptively imaged down to 0.25 nm in 2D and 2.5 nanometers in 3D through a correlative workflow using light, X-ray, electron, FIB-SEM and helium-ion microscopy.
ZEISS provides a complete suite of 2D and 3D microscopy solutions to cover this entire range of length scales.