MRI

Micromeritics Accupyc II 1340 measures the skeletal volume of a material by gas displacement using the volume-pressure relationship of Boyle’s Law.  An inert gas, typically helium, is used as the displacement medium.  The sample is placed in a sealed cup of a known volume.  This cup is then placed into the sample chamber.  Gas is introduced to the sample chamber and then expanded into a second empty chamber with a known volume.  The pressure observed after filling the sample cell and the pressure discharged into expansion chamber are measured, and then the vol

When the contact angle of a drop in a surface is over 90° the surface is referred as hydrophobic, which refers to poor wetting. When the angle is below 90° the surface is referred as hydrophilic. Contact angle is often used to measure cleanliness, roughness, absorption, surface heterogeneity, among other properties.

Auger electrons emitted from the surface are drawn into a spectrometer that ultimately measures their kinetic energy distribution. The technique is inherently surface sensitive because the Auger electrons typically have low kinetic energies (<3kv). The Auger spectra contain information about the concentration and (sometimes) the chemical environment of surface and near-surface atoms. Greater depths (up to a few microns) can be probed by coupling the technique with ion milling. Lateral distributions of elements can be measured with sub-micron resolution.

An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) provides 3-dimensional topographic information about a sample by probing its surface structure with a very sharp tip. The tip is scanned laterally across the surface, and the vertical movements of the tip are recorded and used to construct a quantitative 3-dimensional topographic map. The lateral resolution of the image can be as small as the tip radius (typically 5-15 nm), and the vertical resolution can be on the order of angstroms.