Linkam Scientific Instruments has added a diamond-shaped capillary holder insert to its CAP500 stage, allowing the temperature control stage to be quickly and easily adapted to hold either of two capillary sizes simply by rotating the capillary holder. The CAP500 stage is designed to study samples in in a high pressure quartz capillary, controlling the temperature of a capillary section up to 50 mm in length from < –195 °C up to 500 °C. Samples can be pumped through the capillary at a specific pressure using a pump and pressure gauge to investigate the flow dynamics and rheology of the sample with respect to temperature and pressure using a range of microscopy and spectroscopic techniques including brightfield, IR, X-ray or Raman.
The capillary is inserted through the body of the chamber and housed in a 1.0 mm ø channel inside a 50 mm silver block. The block itself has been designed and engineered to provide a uniform temperature across the length of the capillary. Capillaries loaded into this channel can be moved 25 mm in the x direction and 3.5 mm in the y direction using the xy mechanism to allow for observation across the length of the sample in the capillary. The standard capillary sizes are 1/8” and 1/16”, but customised diamond-shaped inserts allow for different-sized capillaries with an outer diameter of ≤ 0.6 mm. A Dual Capillary CAP500 option is also available: two capillaries can be mounted side by side, then the CAP500’s XY mechanism can be used to move each capillary over the light aperture for imaging.
