TEMPR Facility

The newly established TEMPR Facility in mid-2019 is a world-class shared laboratory for the physical property characterization and elemental analysis of bulk and thin-film biological, soft, and hard materials. The facility houses a suite of state-of-the-art characterization instruments capable of measuring materials thermal, elemental, mechanical, physical, and rheological properties. Each measurement category is summarized below:

Thermal Property Measurements: Three differential scanning calorimeters (TA Instruments DSC Q2000, Discovery DSC 2500, and Netzsch DSC 214 Polyma®) provide versatile materials phase transition measurements from -90 to 600 °C. In particular, the Discovery series DSC 2500 is equipped with a new Fusion Cell™ for high sensitivity, resolution, reproducibility, and reliability. A linear autosampler allows for worry-free 24/7 operation. Modulated DSC® technology enables efficient separation of complex thermal events. Two thermogravimetric analyzers (Netzsch TG 209 F1 Libra® and TA Instruments TGA Q500) are capable of measuring materials mass changes at a temperature from ambient conditions up to 1100 °C with a resolution of 0.1 µg. A simultaneous thermal analyzer NETZSCH STA 449 F3 Jupiter® allows for the measurement of both mass changes and thermal effects up to 1600 °C from a single sample run. An in-line coupled system of a Bruker ALPHA II Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and a QMS 403 D Aëolos® quadrupole mass spectrometer offers comprehensive evolved gas analysis for materials decomposition or desorption.

Elemental Composition Measurements: A state-of-the-art Thermo Scientific™ iCAP™ RQ Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer offers ultra-trace elemental analysis at sub-ppb to ppt levels and provides elemental screening in minutes. The coupled laser ablation system with a 193 nm pulsed excimer laser allows for solid sample introduction and surface elemental profiling. A Thermo Scientific FlashSmart CHNS/O Elemental Analyzer provides combustion and pyrolysis based quantitative elemental determination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen.

STA-QMS-FTIR
LA-ICP-MS

Mechanical Property Measurements: A combination of a TA Instruments dynamic mechanical analyzer Q800 and an Instron 3365 Universal Testing System are capable of measuring mechanical properties of soft materials, liquids, formulations, and composites by introducing force from as little as 0.0001 N up to 50,000 N.

Physical Property Measurements: A Waters ACQUITY Advanced Polymer Chromatography (APC) System fractionates and characterizes polymers and nanomaterials with in-series coupled Wyatt µDAWN multi-angle light scattering (MALS) and Optilab UT-rEX refractive index detectors providing fast and accurate determination of particle sizes and distributions, absolute molecular weights of polymers, and even 3D geometric features of synthetic or natural macromolecules across a broad range of molecular weights (3000 ~ 2,000,000 g/mol). A combined set of 3Flex surface area analyzer and AccuPyc gas pycnometer from Micromeritics offers fully automated analyses of materials volume, surface area, mesopore, and micropore size and distribution, static chemisorption, dynamic chemisorption, the heat of adsorption, and vapor adsorption.

Rheological property measurements: A Discovery series HR-2 hybrid rheometer from TA Instruments offers precise measurements of both viscosity and viscoelasticity of various materials such as high viscosity fluids, pastes, polymer solutions, and melts, and soft solids and as a function of temperature.

TA Q800 DMA
APC-MALS-RI
TA DHR-2 Rheometer