Research & Initiatives
By Dr. Beau Webber
Applications :
Advanced Materials / High Value Manufacturing :
Nano- to Micro-scale metrology of clay, cement, concrete, wood
and medical materials, leading to higher performance and more
cost-effective manufacturing and longer in-service lifetime.
Energy:
Measuring nano-pore distributions in solid electrolytes
for higher performance batteries.
Measuring nano- to micro-pore distributions in sandstone,
carbonate and shale rock systems.
Understanding wetabillity in porous rock systems.
Understanding entrapment in oil/water systems in porous rocks.
Healthcare:
Measuring nano-pore to micro-pore distributions in
Nanotechnology for drug delivery.
Materials studied to date :
Sol-gel & CPG silicas, MCM templated silicas, SBA templated silicas,
Activated carbons, Zeolites, Fired & unfired clays,
Marine Sediments, Chalks, Shales, Sandstones, Oil-bearing rocks,
Cement, Concrete, Wood, Paper,
Rubbers, Artificial skin, Melanised fungal cells, Meteorites.
Our Products & Services
Lab-Tools Ltd. is a micro/SME spin-off company specialising in nano-science, nano-metrology and instrumentation design.
Cost-sensitive materials-science physical characterisation by compact benchtop NMR.
Highly compact precision MK4 NMR relaxation spectrometer
based on VLSI, FPGAs and array-processing software.
Multi-nuclear, mobile / palm-top.
T1,. T2, T1rho, ideal for room-temperature materials-science on solids, liquids, porous and polymer samples. Ideal for on the Benchtop or in the field use.
Lab-Tools NMR spectrometer - 1 page_v1.pdf
Chemists like to study spectra that are produced from the decaying NMR time signal …
But physicists often want to interpret the original decaying time signal -
It contains vital physical property information, and of course can also contain structural information - as is used in imaging.
Our MK4 Time-Domain NMR Spectrometer : Application List :
Food :
Cheese, maturity and ripeness
Viscosity of oils and milk, yoghurt
Viscosity and quantities of oils and sugar solutions in seeds and avocado, etc.
Polymers :
Crystalline amorphous ratio
Rock and oil :
Hydrocarbon content and viscosity in recovered rocks
Pore size in porous rocks
Carbon capture :
Pore size in MCM, SBA, sol-gel, MOFs and other porous materials.
Excluded volumes for different liquids in pores
Batteries :
Surface coating slurry stability
Pore sizes of nanopore coatings
Biochar :
Residual hydrocarbon content after firing
Pore size distributions
Personal care :
Viscosity of solutions and emulsions
Droplet size in emulsions
(one D magnetic gradient)
Measuring Diffusion Constants :
(one D magnetic gradient)
Compact Variable-Temperature
TD NMR Spectrometer. MK4-VT
Ideal for materials-science, measuring polymers, food, & liquids quantity, SFC, crystallinity / amorphous ratio, and viscosity.
-20C to +70C
Variable-Temperature Time-Domain multi-nuclear NMR Spectrometers MK4 & MK5 :
Ideal to measure molecular mobility, dynamics, stiffness, viscosity or rigidity. T1, T2, T1rho.
Thermo-electric cooling, no cryogens, no recirculating chiller.
Shoe-box sized, ideal for on the Benchtop or in the field use.
Gate-array for R.F. processing. Built-in Windows 11 mini-computer for control, array-processing data analysis with on-line fitting, FFT and T2 fitting, and up to three displays.
Nanometer to micrometer poresize distribution NMR Cryoporometer. MK4-CryoP8
Also a versatile variable-temperature NMR multi-nuclear Spectrometer, -60C to +80C.
Thermo-electric cooling, no cryogens. T1, T2, T1rho.
Lab-Tools nanopore cryoP9 instrument - 1 page_v2.pdf