From fresh steak to new phones, the goods we buy are usually wrapped in one thing: plastic. And plastic dominates how we pack and store products for good reason – it is lightweight, cost-efficient, and durable. Plastic helps us transport and receive goods in perfect condition, thus reducing food waste and preventing damaged goods from heading to landfills.
DetailsHydrogels are three-dimensional porous strctures that can absorb large amounts of water. They can be made up of polymers, protein, peptides, colloids, surfactants, or lipids.1 Hydrogels’ ability to uptake large amounts of water is useful for many biological applications, including drug delivery and tissue engineering. Since a hydrogels’ properties change as it absorbs water, scientists must accurately characterize its behavior at different saturation amounts and in varying conditions.
DetailsIf you’re working with materials that can be flowed, for example within pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics, or petrochemical industries, it’s likely that there is a viscometer in the laboratory that is the go-to instrument for formulation testing or QA purposes. However, does this viscometer give you the whole picture and fully meet all your needs?
DetailsWhether researchers are optimizing the texture of yogurt or studying adhesives’ curing, rheometry helps us understand materials and predict their behavior. Rheometry measures the amount of deformation a material or liquid undergoes when a force is applied. The combination of stress, strain and shear behavior forms the basis of rheology, the science of the deformation of materials.
DetailsDifferential scanning calorimetry is an analytical technique used to measure the amount of heat released or absorbed by a sample during heating or cooling over a range of temperature. As well as being used to characterize the thermal properties of a material, a differential scanning calorimeter is used to determine the temperature at which particular phase transitions occur, including glass transition temperature, fusion and crystallization events.
DetailsWhen it comes to selecting materials for your next innovative product, the material specification sheet is likely the first place that you will turn. This document provides core properties measured by the manufacturer and serves as an essential tool for supplier verification and new product development. However, while these sheets are reliable and provide a standard method for comparison, they often fail to tell the whole story.
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