Patent for Mini-Rheometer
We developed a novel mini-rheometer designed to address challenges in measuring flow properties and behaviour of scarce materials. With this instrument it is possible to obtain rheological data from sample volumes of a few microliters with the same quality as with conventional full-sized rheometers, while our device is small enough to accommodate in a typical microscope.
Current rotational rheometers on the market require typically sample volumes in the range of several millilitres to tens of millilitres to achieve high accuracy rheological data in case of low viscous samples. However, for many samples, like biological materials, novel drug formulations or well-specified compositions, these quantities cannot always be provided. Current lab devices for small samples relying on linear motion are limited in process range. By using a new manufacturing technology for precise and complex glass parts, a macroscopic rheometer has been minimized, by about a factor of thousand in length scales. Therefore, the mini-rheometer can be used as a stand-alone device, but its small size also allows hands on combination with various analysing methods such as confocal microscopy or light scattering.
Our mini-rheometer is especially suited to perform rheological measurements on ample volumes as small as a few microlitres. However, rheology on standard samples is also feasible without losing data quality while the production costs for the mini-rheometer are significantly smaller than for a standard instrument.
A patent application for a crucial part of the instrument’s design was approved August 2024.