Measure the Stability and Particle Size of Colloidal Dispersions, Emulsions, and Suspensions Directly

With LUM’s STEP-Technology®, you can directly measure the stability of your colloidal dispersion, emulsion, and suspension. You can analyze all colloidal stability and instability processes, such as creaming, sedimentation, aggregation, flocculation, coalescence, precipitation, phase inversion, and Ostwald ripening - no dilution required.

You can do so because the STEP-Technology® is a “first principle” measurement technique that instantaneously captures your formulation’s state of dispersion across the entire sample.

In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption…….

….a calculation is said to be from first principles, or ab initio, if it starts directly at the level of established laws of physics and does not make assumptions such as empirical model and fitting parameters

First principle. (2023, March 25). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle

Colloid Dispersion Stability

The distinction between first and non-first principle techniques is not merely academic. It has real-world applicability and significance.

First: choosing a first principle technique to measure colloidal dispersion stability ensures the results are accurate and applicable to real-world product performance.

Second: the ability to analyze your sample in its original state - no dilution required. Just place your formulation in the instrument and press start.

Third: the capacity to perform product shelf-life calculations and predictions.

The STEP-Technology® takes these advantages one step further by allowing you to analyze not just one point in your sample but your entire sample from top to bottom.

So you can characterize and understand any colloid dispersion-based product and application successfully, we integrated the STEP-Technology® into different analytical platforms.

The First Principle STEP-Technology® integrated with the analytical centrifugation platform to characterize colloidal dispersions.

Please see other STEP-Technology® integrations in the instrument section.

Particle Size Analysis

The STEP-Technology® also has an added particle sizing benefit giving you exceptional particle size distribution resolutions.

Particles having different sizes will have different translational velocities and optical scattering profiles. Because the STEP-Technology® instantaneously analyzes the whole sample from top to bottom, it can use the two fundamental physical laws that govern particle movement and light scattering profile: Stokes Law and Mie Scattering.

The result is that the LUMiSizer has significantly better resolution for complex and multi-modal particle size distributions than other light-based particle size analysis techniques.

Our particle size Analyzer LUMiSizer can efficiently resolve the correct particle size in a colloidal dispersion having nine modalities.

particle size distribution multi-modal colloidal dispersion

The image above shows the LUMiSizer particle size results for a suspension comprising seven mono-modal particle-size suspensions. If accurate and high-resolution particle sizing is essential to you, please get in touch with us to see how we stack up to the competition.

Adhesion Analysis

In addition to colloidal dispersion characterization tools, we offer the sophisticated adhesion tester LUMiFrac® for the testing of adhesives, laminates, and coatings. The LUMiFrac® is temperature-controlled so that you can investigate temperature effects on adhesion performance.

Measure both tensile and shear stresses. Because you can run up to eight samples simultaneously, the LUMiFrac® gives you statistically relevant adhesion results fast.

Please read more about how our technologies may benefit your work and research in the instruments and knowledge sections.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, the LUM Americas team.