Analyzing a hard hydrogel using the Diamond Compression Cell.
IR spectroscopy is the perfect tool to check the quality and composition of plastics. Ideally, one needs to analyze a thin and uniform section of the material. One way to do this is to melt the plastic into a thin-film with a film-maker, but this might be unsuitable if melting the material causes it to decompose. The alternative is to a use the Specac DC-3 Diamond Compression Cell, that can squeeze even the hardest and most resilient of materials.
The DC-3 is a two-part stainless-steel cell with 3.5 mm windows made of IIIa mono-crystalline diamond. The cell windows are hard enough to allow small chips of plastic to be compressed into thin layers. Reliable measurements can be made when the DC-3 is used with a beam condenser or microscope, with minimal sample preparation.
This note compares the measurements of a commercially available hard resin analyzed using a microscope.
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