Materials science is the complex interdisciplinary field associated with the discovery, manufacture, and application of novel material arrangements. It is fundamentally concerned with understanding the physiochemical structure of a liquid, solid, or amorphous material, as well as its properties, performance, and processing capabilities. These overarching principles are known as material characterization.
Material characterization has been carried out using a range of established methods. These techniques fall roughly into one of two categories: invasive or non-invasive material characterization. Each one has benefits and drawbacks for assessing the performance of materials under thermodynamic stress or at rest.
One of the major challenges of invasive characterization techniques is the avoidance of denaturation of complex formulations during the experiment. Nowadays, many industrial materials consist of multiple compounds (fillers, binders, thickeners, particulates, droplets, solvents, polymers, etc.) which all are in equilibrium. These interactions may be altered by invasive techniques. These are appropriated only if they enable to mimic or reproduction of processing conditions of a product during manufacturing, storage, or use conditions. On the other hand, non-invasive techniques are suitable for studying very sensitive materials or analyzing materials at rest to mimic storage conditions.
Innovative material characterization is focused on revolutionizing the status quo in materials science, with novel probing and testing methodologies that enable non-invasive assessment of the physical stability of dispersions at rest.
Microtrac offers products for all particle size analysis technologies.
