PHOTO: PerkinElmer provides various instruments for testing polymers – from hyphenation as a tool for polymer characterization, packaging analysis using chromatography, and automated FR-IR microscope and imaging systems Instruments of change

PERKINElmer, a global company providing innovative detection, imaging, informatics and service capabilities to a vast array of industries, including industrial, nano and polymer, spent a week travelling South Africa in March with their INstruments of Change Tour.

The one-day seminar sessions in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town offered delegates from the plastics industry a chance to learn more about the latest advances in scientific applications and instrumentation. Specific seminars also gave valuable insights into testing for polymer characterization, food packaging analysis, extracting information from multilayer packaging materials, amongst others.

 

CSIR polymer research uses PerkinElmer instruments

Of particular interest was the presentation by Gertrude Makgatho from the CSIR’s National Centre for Nano Structured Materials, which focuses on material characterization of polymers. Gertrude characterises polymer-based materials using TGA, DSC, DMA, tensile testing and FTIR and UV spectroscopy. Gertrude obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Polymer Technology, Plastics and Polymer Engineering Technology/Technician from the Tshwane University of Technology.

The characterisation facility is rapidly becoming a leading centre in the imaging of polymers, which are notoriously difficult materials to study at the nano-scale level because they demand delicate sample preparation routines. At this level, they also rapidly degrade under the beam inside electron microscopes.

Though the explanation of the various testing methods is possibly best understood by the scientists, what is good to know is that this national facility is available to the South African polymer industry.

Gertrude mentioned that recent happy clients have been a large petrochemical company who worked with the CSIR to test material which they believed to be contaminated with wax.

Another client, selling a rubber-based material, wanted to test if their supplier had in fact delivered the material requested as it was behaving differently during processing.

Research and development at this centre supports the manufacturing of bulk materials with improved properties, such as plastics that can tolerate very high and low temperatures and plastics that possess fire retardant properties or that have high resistance to tearing.

The facility houses a wide range of imaging instruments (high-resolution transmission and scanning electron, scanning probe, visible light, Raman and Fourier Transform Infra-Red microscopes). Imaging is used to characterise the structure of materials at atomic and molecular levels, so that scientists can understand how changes in structure translates into improved properties.

The facility also has state-of-the-art equipment to obtain ultra-thin sections required for transmission electron microscopy from hard materials (focused ion beam milling) or soft polymers (cryo-ultramicrotomy). A significant part of this equipment was funded by the DST.

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