Deben, a leading provider of in-situ testing stages together with innovative accessories and components for electron microscopy, reports on the use of the Microtest 200 N tensile stage in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College.

Dr Koon-Yang Lee is a Lecturer in Composite Manufacturing in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London. His young and dynamic research group focuses on the manufacturing of polymer (nano)composites, surface and interface engineering, particle stabilised emulsions and foams. His research is highly multi-disciplinary, with an emphasis on the development and manufacturing of novel polymer composite materials with a focus on tailoring the interface between two (or more) phases to bridge the gap between chemistry, physics, mathematics, materials science and engineering. They apply green engineering principles to produce environmental friendly, biodegradable and high performance materials for various high volume structural and semi-structural applications. The area of focus here is on the characterisation of nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites. These are designed to have mechanical performance that exceeds commonly used engineering materials. Their use includes high volume structural and semi-structural applications.

Asked why he chose to use the Microtest 200 N stage from Deben for his research, Dr Lee said “The sample size that we can produce is small for early-stage materials exploration. The Deben stage works perfectly in this context as it can be used to test small dog bone specimens and the load cell is well designed for the range of loads cellulose nanopapers and nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites. The load-displacement curves obtained have better resolution than other stages that I have used. Deben also provides good customer support, from the training of using the testing stage to debugging any problems encountered.

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