The Discovery SDT 650 is a differential scanning calorimeter and thermogravimetric analyzer. The TGA measures change in mass as heat is applied to the chamber in a given atmosphere. The TGA’s temperature ranges from 50°C to 1500°C. Currently, there are two atmospheres provided by the Materials Characterization Lab: air...
Read More >>Rheometry Basics
Rheology is a broad category of physics involving various types of instruments to help describe the flow behavior of just about any type of matter. Most rheologists are concerned with viscosity: a material’s resistance to flow, viscoelasticity: the tendency of a substance to flow under some conditions and snap...
Read More >>Grain Size Analysis with SEM
Grain size is an important feature that can determine strength, ductility, and toughness. It is widely used to characterize geologic and metallic samples. Interestingly, the underlying mathematics enables snow science to use grain size to determine the bond strength of snow crystals and to predict the likelihood of avalanches....
Read More >>Thin Film XRD
Characterization of thin films can be performed to identify properties including the composition, crystal structure, preferred orientation, and film thickness. The MCL has a few thin-film characterization tools, including the X’Pert XRD (x-ray diffraction) and the Hitachi TM 3030+ SEM (EDS or energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy). The crystal structure...
Read More >>Heating Rate in DSC
Engineered materials are becoming more complex in attempts to heat increasing needs, such as enhanced physical properties. With that, their characterization is becomes increasingly difficult. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is a thermal analysis technique which tells of various thermal properties of a material such as phase transition temperatures. Many...
Read More >>Tensile Testing Yarn
Tensile strength is defined as the strength of a material under tension (pulling) as distinct from compression, torsion, or shear. The definition is vague because it covers a wide range of properties including Breaking force, Breaking strength, Breaking tenacity, Breaking toughness, Chord modulus, Elongation, Elongation at break, Elongation at...
Read More >>NIR Spectroscopy in the Food Industry
The infrared spectrum can be classified into three regions: near, mid, and far IR. Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) typically uses mid- and far-infrared wavelengths to characterize specific bonds in a material. This method is most commonly used to identify organic and polymeric materials. Near IR is not as commonly...
Read More >>The Langmuir Adsorption Model
The study of physisorption goes back nearly 200 years and aims to explain the science of gas interactions on the surface of a material. This gas is known as an adsorbate and the process of this interaction is called adsorption. One of the many groundbreaking scientists who worked in...
Read More >>Surface Analysis by T-plot
Surfaces vary in multiple ways. For example, surface pores can vary by size, depth, and location. Various techniques exist that analyze the surface of a material, most of which rely heavily on the understanding of the existence of micro an mesopores. Micropores typically have a size of 20 Å,...
Read More >>Aspect Ratios in Particle Size Analysis
Particles can exist in a myriad of different shapes. This can make conducting particle size analysis (PSA) through laser diffraction difficult as it assumes that particles are spherical. Some examples of minerals whose particles are extremely nonspherical include Wollastonite (rod-shaped) and Garnet crystals (cubic). One important value to keep...
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