Hello everyone,
We synthesize a lot of ceramic catalysts. For a long time now, we are facing problems in accurately and efficiently characterising the synthesized powders. We have identified the main problems as follows -
1. We have a doubt whether we are doing the sample treatment correctly or not. A lot of vendors tell us that, “providing a dry, fine powder is sufficient”. But is there any comprehensive guide or something that can help me help in deciding the appropriate sample treatment for a particular characterisation method?
2. For a lot of techniques/methods, depending on the instruments the operator has to choose between a lot of parameters depending on the inherent characterisation properties of the powders. We feel the operators that we are dealing with nonchalantly input the default settings and this makes the output coming out not so accurate. Again, how do I navigate efficiently through this space?
Anyone who has experience in operating various machines and analysing the output, any help will be appreciated.
PS – We are doing the following techniques –
1. Powder XRD
2. ICP-AES
3. TEM/SEM
4. XRF
5. Chemisorption
Omkar Kedge,
Thanks for the question, however, there are a few clarifications that are needed before anybody can provide a specific answer.
1. What is the sample treatment? What is the goal for doing this? In the ideal scenario, what is the expected outcome?
2. Specific parameters for all the techniques (and inherently instruments) depend solely on the material and the information needed. This is not for general operators (I am assuming with a lab tech type role) to decide. This requires some technical expertise, specifically a masters or PhD degree in some materials field (BS with some experience is also acceptable).
Good luck with this, and feel free to message me directly for more information.
it is difficult to provide a way to procede without any information about the materials you are interested. Every technique has its own parameters, that should fit with the analysed material. XRD provide the qualitative analysis (and also quantitative), chemisorption the surface area and pore distribution, XRF the chemical composition and so on. But without information about your materials (ceramic is a generic term) and the aim of your research we cannot provide useful suggestion.
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