Watch our first behind-the-scenes video featuring the R&D Laboratory in our Oak Harbor facility. Hear our testing specialist, Troy Sanders, discuss how we helped a customer solve a ceramic-on-ceramic valve aspiration issue in their system!
Designing the Optimal Fluid Pathway for LC-MS Applications
Over the last decade, few things have had as dramatic an impact on liquid chromatography as the availability and subsequent proliferation of mass spectrometry. Aided in part by lower overall ownership costs and greatly improved technology, mass spectrometry has seen tremendous growth, both in the number of instruments sold and in the number of analysts actively using the equipment. A key challenge when coupling mass spectrometry instruments to liquid chromatography equipment is how to best design the fluid pathway to ensure that optimal results are achieved. In fact, one of the most critical parts of the fluid pathway is the…[Read this article]
Safely Transferring Biological Samples
With a global increased emphasis on biotechnology and alternative, biologically-based alternative fuel development, more and more analytical work is being done utilizing fluids that contain biological material. whether the work involves blood cell counting or bacteria culturing (among many other life science applications), one commonality is often the need to transfer biological samples from one point to another. sometimes this is accomplished through manual means (e.g., with manual pipetting); however, high throughput is also a major driver that continues to push the development of more automated techniques. The challenge many researchers face is how various pumping technologies negatively impact cellular…[Read this article]
Solutions To The Common ‘Bubble Problem’ (Part 3)
From my previous post, we saw that bubbles can form from cavitation during dispensing due to excess dissolved gas, or to low pressure areas and turbulence during dispensing. Sometimes bubbles form despite the best efforts of instrument engineers to eliminate dissolved atmosphere. Unfortunately, bubbles can show up long after an instrument is designed and placed into service. Even the most well-thought-out designs can encounter strange, unexplainable, errors. The following is an example of such a situation and its solution. Three years ago, a customer came to IDEX Health & Science with a problem: they were encountering a build-up of bubbles…[Read this article]
Degassing: A Behind-The-Scenes Discussion
While working on our latest IDEX Health & Science engineering webinar, our fluidics experts had a lot to talk about. We captured a frank, behind-the-scenes discussion about real-life degassing considerations, and thought we’d pass it along! To sign up for the upcoming Degassing & Debubbling webinar, or to view our archived webinars, visit us here: http://www.idex-hs.com/about/webinar_video_library.aspx
Solutions To The Fundamental “Bubble Problem” Videos
As part of our ongoing series about the benefits of degassing and debubbling technology, we would like to share two videos that showcase our product offerings. Whether you are working with HPLC or low-pressure diagnostic applications, dissolved gases and bubbles in system liquids cause dispense volume anomalies in many instruments, negatively affecting both dispense precision and analytical accuracy. Now you have a choice of components for actively removing bubbles with or without also removing dissolved system gases. Online vacuum degassing offers operating convenience, high efficiency, and low operating costs compared to other common degassing technologies. Watch to learn more about…[Read this article]
Solutions to the Fundamental “Bubble Problem” (Part 2)
Continuing where my previous blog post left off, it became obvious to early HPLC engineers that the mixing of solvents was problematic to designing these systems. Pure water or water-based fluidic systems were not thought to have a real need for the removal of air from fluids and reagents in their systems. In fact, early bioanalyzers utilized air segmented streams of fluid moving through relatively large internal diameter tubes–a method known as segmented flow analysis. Systems like that generally disposed of the air bubble through various mechanisms, or simply ignored the portion of the detector signal related to the bubble….[Read this article]
Solutions To The Fundamental “Bubble Problem”
We use many different means to track the amount of air in fluids: dissolved oxygen meters for water, solvent-oxygen interactions that are visible for alcohols, and some solvents and sensors that measure the amount of oxygen in gasses themselves. From the amount of dissolved oxygen, we can infer the total amount of dissolved atmosphere in a fluid system. Early engineers found that many different systems were adversely affected by either the amount of oxygen dissolved in water, or oxygen and nitrogen together. The advent of the steam engine necessitated the study of corrosion of boiler tubes, deep sea divers had…[Read this article]
Non-contact Dispensing Technology
Solving for Substrate and Reagent Interactions On Biosensor Surfaces Coating the surface of a Biosensor with biologically active matrices is commonplace. The level of difficulty increases when you need to accomplish this with low microliter or sub-microliter volumes. Further complications arise when you need to have the matrix uniformly dispersed over a customized sensor shape without breaching boundaries. In short, this is no easy task! One of the greatest advantages of low-volume, non-contact dispensing is that the dispensing needle does not come into contact with the substrate–so dispensing quality is independent of substrate. As non-contact dispensing moves into more non-standard…[Read this article]
Troubleshooting UHPLC Connection Challenges
As UHPLC has gained a solid foothold in the market, some of the problems that have plagued chromatographers – problems like band broadening, split peaks, carryover, etc. – have begun to occur with greater frequency. While numerous things may be contributing to these problems, one common thing is often overlooked: possible problems with the system’s tubing connections. Problem #1 – Tubing Slippage Because system pressures in UHPLC can exceed 15,000 psi (1,034 bar), the physical demands on the tubing connections can be very significant. Due to the higher pressures of UHPLC coupled with the pressure cycling that can occur in…[Read this article]