Morphology under shear - Homepage WEE-Solve GmbH

Our equipment enables us the observation of complex liquids relating to its structural dynamics under temperature controlled shear. Examples are coarsening binary liquid during its phase separation, shear induced mixing or demixing of polymer blends, defect dynamics of liquid crystals, aggregation of red blood cells and their deformation during the shear/flow etc.

The measuring system consists of a microscope and an optical shear cell. The cell is built up of two parallel polished quartz windows with an gap of 5 mm. The lower windows is included in a rotating metal plate. The windows are close to a block heater, which has a temperature preciseness of +/-0.2°C.

Linkam shear cell with a microscope

These are the specifications of our measuring system:

• optical shear cell: CSS 450 (Fa. Linkam Scientific, GB)
  

• Microscope BX 50 (Fa. Olympus)
  

• CCD-Camera Jai M 10 (Fa. Jai, Denmark)
  

• Plate/plate-geometry (Gap: 5-2,500 mm)
  

• Temperature range: 20 - 450°C
  

• Shear rate: 0.003-7,500 1/s