A picture is worth a thousand words….

…so this blog will be brief.

When I am demonstrating the capabilities of the Morphologi G3 to potential customers, one of the features that leaves a lasting impression is the ability to return back to a particle after the measurement is complete to get a closer look in the manual microscope view. One click of the mouse on the particle thumbnail image and whoosh, the instrument drives the sample literally under the microscope for closer scrutiny.

Below is an example of a crystalline sample I was looking at the other day.

The first image is lit from below the sample  using diascopic brightfield illumination – it shows me some excellent detail with the structure of the particle as the light passes through it.

The second is lit from above  using episcopic darkfield illumination – it picks up more surface features and edges on the top face of the particle that scatter oblique light strongly.

The third is my favourite – using darkfield episcopic illumination with polarization filters and colour – we  can see certain regions within the sample showing up as green – indicating these regions have similar crystallographic orientations.

Finding out more

 
Automated imaging systems can take you from knowing nothing of the shape of particles in a sample to probing crystalline structure in less than an hour. So, if you need to understand the impact of shape on your product, or rapidly detect contaminants, or simply make sure you are looking at the right constituent of a blend it can be a truly powerful technique.
And if you don’t know whether any of these reasons are relevant to you? Well to some extent you won’t find out unless you look.

Malvern particle gallery ?

If you, like me, have a particle image you’d like to share then please let me know. Maybe we can put together a gallery to share with our particle characterisation colleagues of particle images showing the richness and beauty of different particle forms?