Why the Mastersizer 3000+ is the smartest way to measure particle size
Malvern Panalytical Pharmaceuticals
Supporting you in each stage of discovery, development and manufacture of (bio)pharmaceuticals.
Particle sizing is at the heart of many of the 21st century’s most important technologies. From screening the quality of electrode slurries used in battery production to determining the rates at which drugs dissolve in the body or optimizing the flow of powders used in additive manufacturing, this analysis has no end of innovative and future-oriented applications.
Malvern Panalytical’s Mastersizer range of laser diffraction instruments is the world's most popular series of particle-size analyzers. We recently held a three-part masterclass introducing the features that make it the smart way to measure particle size: SOP Architect, Size Sure, and Data Quality Guidance. Read on for a quick recap!
SOP Architect: Streamlining method development
Before users start measuring with any analytical instrument, they need to develop a method that others can follow to obtain similar results. That could be other users in the same lab, or on the other side of the world. Yet, it can be difficult to determine that a developed method truly is the best for minimizing errors and maximizing confidence – especially when a second opinion isn’t readily available.
The problem facing users of particle-sizing instruments is that many factors can affect results, and if one user makes a mistake in the developed measurement sequence, it affects the measurements made by all subsequent users too. Factors such as sample stability, concentration, and dispersion all leave room for error, so an effective method can save immense amounts of time, cost, and effort.
That’s where SOP Architect comes in. This intelligent assistant helps you create the best wet dispersion methods for any sample with ease and confidence. It can guide every user through a seven-step workflow that generates the data needed to suggest a best-practice method. This guidance includes detailed step-by-step guides and videos prepared by our experts, placing Malvern Panalytical’s decades of expertise at your fingertips.
Delve into the details – the SOP Architect masterclass is available on demand.
Size Sure: Unparalleled accuracy and reproducibility
Once the most suitable method is applied, how does the measurement work? Laser diffraction measures the angular variation in light intensity as a laser beam passes through a particulate sample. It then uses the Mie theory of light scattering to calculate particle sizes: large particles scatter light at small angles, and small particles scatter light at large angles.
Laser diffraction instruments thus provide fast, reproducible particle size measurements. However, the challenge with laser diffraction is what happens when light encounters contaminants, bubbles, dust, or other instabilities. Indeed, light diffracts in contact with even the smallest particles. When measured, these diffractions could lead to measurements that aren’t representative of the sample. Simply averaging the diffraction measurements would obscure such statistically irrelevant diffractions, but this loses information that could be of interest to the user.
Instead, the Size Sure measurement method leverages Malvern Panalytical’s Adaptive Diffraction technology and artificial intelligence software to distinguish between data seen constantly throughout the experiment (“steady state”) and data seen very rarely (“transient state”). Both results are then displayed. Users can thus benefit from reproducible steady-state data and use transient-state data to develop even more reliable and efficient methods.
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Data Quality Guidance: Simplified data quality assessments
One of the most challenging steps remains: assessing data quality. Poor data quality can result from factors such as contamination in cell windows and optical components, a misaligned laser, bubbles, contaminants in the dispersant, or a dispersant temperature that’s too high or low. If unnoticed, these issues can lead to unreliable or inaccurate data. This can mean lost time spent troubleshooting poor-quality data and wasted dispersants and samples.
The Mastersizer 3000+’s Data Quality Guidance detects poor-quality data as soon as possible. It then helps determine the source of the issue and guides the user through its resolution. How? By proactively screening for a diverse array of potential data-quality issues at every stage of the measurement, flagging any anomalies, and providing a comprehensive list of causes and solutions ranked by likelihood. By providing helpful, specific feedback on factors affecting your measurement, Data Quality Guidance gives you more confidence in your results – and in your future experiment setup.
Interested in confidently producing exceptional results? The Data Quality Guidance masterclass is available on-demand.
Think particle size, choose Mastersizer
Combining class-leading particle sizing performance (for the best-quality data) with AI-powered software solutions (for the best-quality decisions), the Mastersizer 3000+ is truly the top choice for laser diffraction novices and veterans alike. For users in research and industry alike, it’s an instrument fit for the future of particle-sizing applications!