I have been a bit remiss on the blog ( for a moth or two!!) – sorry but I am back into it and here goes.
We have another instrument which in its own way is as powerful but it works on different principle-it is the GC-MS (gas chromatograph- mass spectrometer).
So the FTIR gives you chemical information about your sample and the GC-MS gives you mass information. Using them together works well because they complement each other. Unfortunately the GC-MS can only handle liquids that can be vaporized.If you want to look at solids on the GC-MS you have to carryout extractions with solvents which is laborious and will only pull out certain materials.
We have just got our hands on a sampling accessory that allows us to handle solids and run them through the GC-MS. It is a pyrolysis injector.
This will take a solid sample and heat it up- the gases given off are then sent into the GC-MS which then analyses them. Methods can be built that will do this in a multishot sequence eg an intial run up to 150°, that will release any solvent, then a second run up to 300° that will release any unreacted components, followed by a final run at 700° that will burn off the polymer. The beauty of it all is that there is no sample preparation required and the multishot pyrolysis is done sequentially on the same sample, which makes it a fast and simple. This all comes with its own data base of common pyrolysis products which can be used for searching any unknown peaks so the analysis is simple as well.
We are really excited and can’t wait to get it all working. Hopefully it will add another “string to our bow” when it comes to us investigating our customers materials issues.