SDT 650

The SDT650 is a combined DSC and TGA instrument capable of reaching temperatures up to 1500°C under nitrogen, air or certain gases using the gas blending module (RA dependent). You can look at samples up to a mass of 200mg.

We have two pieces of equipment in Physical Science dedicated to thermal analysis of samples, both from Waters. One technique that can be used is Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA), which looks at the mass change of the sample over a defined temperature range, which allows you to examine such properties as water or volatile content as well as other aspects of the material’s thermal decomposition/volatilization or stability. The other technique is Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), where the technique looks at the energy difference between heating up the sample and a reference. DSC is useful to look at glass transition, melting, thermal stability and many other aspects of the materials properties.

Both the TGA 5500 and the SDT 650 are controlled using the Waters Trios software, which allows you to program the runs and examine the data, and is able to export in various formats to be examined off line. There are the options to connect the vents of these two pieces of equipment to a Mass Spectrometer (MS) to analyse the resultant exhaust gases.