It may not be alchemy — turning lead into gold — but it could turn every day things into something more valuable. In metathesis, chemical bonds are broken and new ones are formed. In olefin metathesis, a catalyst will enable a double-bonded atomic group to change places with another. It has long been possible to [...]
Plastics, Polymers, Rubbers
Polymer analysis can involve Chromatography (to separate mixtures into individual components), Spectroscopy (to determine what a material is), Microscopy (for information about size, shape, and structure of materials), Physical Testing (to measure sample performance under specified test conditions), Wet Chemistry (often part of a more complex testing plan), Thermal Analysis (to determine physical properties as a function of time, or frequency, and temperature), Titrations (chemical analysis for a particular analyte). Some of the products PSI has tested include:
- Medical devices and medical products
- Pharmaceutical products
- Industrial products
- Aerospace & defense industry products
- Consumer products
- Material suppliers
You can read more about PSI's services in plastics, polymers, and rubbers here.
Please contact us with any questions or to request a quote.
Check out our recent blog posts on plastics, polymers, and rubbers testing below.
A Food Can Help Its Own Packaging
May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A material that could keep food fresher and make food packaging more environmentally friendly might come from a food itself. A European project is leveraging the qualities of chitin and chitosan from shrimp shells to conserve food wrapped in plastic. Then, after its use, the packaging biodegrades, reports a news release from Nofima, a food [...]
Polymeric Nanofiber Is Tough and Strong
May 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment
We might be able to build tougher airplanes, stronger bridges, and harder body armor, thanks to the research conducted by materials engineers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Yuris Dzenis, professor of mechanical and materials engineering, and his team at the university developed an unusually thin polyacrilonitrile nanofiber — a kind of a synthetic polymer similar [...]
Bioengineered Windpipe Implanted Into Toddler
May 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A two-and-a-half-year-old girl is the youngest person to have received a bioengineered organ — a windpipe in this case — that was made from plastic fibers and human cells. The successful transplant of the synthetic windpipe on the girl, a Korean-Canadian named Hannah Warren, may give regenerative medicine a huge boost. The surgery, which took [...]
Light Helps Design Polymer Circuits
April 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Photovoltaic materials could be made thinner, more efficient, and more stable thanks to a discovery from scientists in London. The researchers at Imperial College London discovered a new way to position nanoparticles in plastics. The method uses a combination of heat, and low-intensity visible and UV light to arrange the nanoparticles in patterns, reports Energy [...]
New Method in Polymer Chromatography
April 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment
As polymers become more complex, traditional separation techniques used to analyze the material’s composition are no longer adequate for today’s research and development demands. But a Massachusetts lab instrument business owner, who helped build a refractometer 50 years ago, and Dow Chemical Company have teamed up to develop a system that they say can provide [...]
Synthetic Polymer Relieves Knee Pain
April 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment
As anyone with chronic knee pain will attest, being mobile in order to perform even the simplest tasks can be excruciating and frustrating. But thanks to research conducted by scientists at Boston University, people with knee pain and arthritis may soon get pain relief. Or even stave off total knee replacement surgery. The researchers developed a [...]
3-D Polymer Printing Will Keep Lawyers Busy
April 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
This is a guest post by Steve Erickson. How would you like to be able to conjure up a new pair of glasses if you lose your old ones? A new part for your broken watch? How about a dinner? 3-D printers are making all of this possible. They use polymers to create solid, three-dimensional objects, [...]
Polymer-Blend Material Aims to Mend Broken Bones
April 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Bad bone breaks may no longer need a metal pin or plate to help them heal, if Spanish researchers’ medical idea comes to fruition. The materials engineers from the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country are developing a biodegradable polymer, infused with bioglass, that could help bones heal without needing additional surgical procedures, reports CORDIS News. [...]
Polymer Scaffolds May Lead to More Effective Cancer Therapies
April 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A polymer structure, much like scaffolds used to support or repair buildings, could trigger more breakthroughs in cancer research. Medical researchers have developed three-dimensional scaffolds made from porous polymers to mimic the environment in which cancer tumors grow in a human body. Cancer cells can then be grown in that structure — outside the body [...]
