Thermogravimetric Analysis Instrument

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This application requests a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) instrument that is capable of analyzing air sensitive samples, and can perform mass analysis on evolved gases to allow identification of decomposition products. The requested instrument, a TA Instruments Discovery TGA 550 with a benchtop Discovery Quadrupole mass spectrometer, will be used by at least 10 research groups at McMaster university, and is critically needed for the research being carried out. It will be a unique instrument at McMaster with no other instrument being available that can perform this type of analysis. The research that will be supported by this instrument extends across numerous fields, ranging from polymer chemistry to nano-materials, inorganic complexes, energy storage devices, and biomaterials. It will be used by researchers from multiple faculties, including Science and Engineering. In particular, this instrument will be critically important to a number of projects involving carbon nanotube purification, where conjugated polymers are used to selectively isolate semiconducting and metallic structures. This research effort will build on recent advances in the Adronov group, who showed that polymer electronics affects the selectivity toward specific carbon nanotubes in a predictable manner. In this work, determination of the polymer:nanotube weight ratio is a required component of this work, and must be reported in all publications, making this instrument critically important. Similarly, TGA analysis is required to determine water content within fuel cell membranes, which dictates their proton transport capacity. This analysis aids the development of membranes that will result in higher efficiency fuel cells, and will decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. In addition, TGA will be used to determine the composition within polymer-grafted cellulose nanocrystals, as well as the components within hydrogel-based drug delivery agents. Finally, this instrument will be used to analyze decomposition temperatures of organometallic complexes that are air-sensitive, which is extremely difficult without the requested equipment. Currently, no TGA instrument with the capability to measure air-sensitive samples, carry out mass analysis, and handle milligram-scale samples is available at McMaster, making it an absolutely indispensible piece of equipment for multiple research groups.