​I have worked for 20 years in the R&D of global chemical companies and I always appreciated their own, in-house analytical services. They are fast, have known methods, all costs are budgeted and best: costs appear only somewhere in the depths of SAP. Great!
 
Today, I’m running Inolytix Ltd and we bring innovative, less known analytical tools as external services into chemical companies. Why? It’s my believe and experience that many opportunities in understanding your F&E or quality issues are missed, simply because the known analytical methods are too often not the best. Or to quote Donald Rumsfeld “…there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.” 
 
In this article, I’d like to discuss the advantages of in-house analytical services, the advantages of external analytical services and how to balance both in the best possible way. To be a bit provocative, I’m stating some common believes as myths and explain the truth behind. Are your experiences different or do you share similar stories? Would be great to know !
 
Myth #1:  in-house analysis is the cheapest option
Yes and no. For standard analysis like HPLC, being used on a daily basis, hardly anything can beat your own analytical laboratory. It is not only comparable in costs to the cheapest external laboratory (even though some outsourcing labs argue on price), but also fast and results can be easily discussed with the experts in-house. 
But for analytical methods not being used every day (like e.g. Raman-FTIR, XPS or IGC), things look very different: These analytical services (if available in-house) seem cheap too but in fact, they are not.
 
Truth #1: a lot of in-house costs are hidden
Three factors seem to hide some of the true costs:
First, service, maintenance and repair of analytical equipment is a considerable cost factor especially if not used on a regular basis. And these are cash-out costs.
Second, method development for rarely used instruments are often difficult and time consuming. However, the analytical department needs to promote special methods, otherwise they will never be used – so costs are distributed. 
Least obvious, but very important is the third point: the value of expertise. Experts need exercise, many different samples and challenges. This is easy with daily analysis, but difficult with less used ones. Either the expertise is not very high or regular practice is costly – either way, this is not satisfying.  
 
Myth #2:  new analytical instruments amortize easily
NO – at least in many cases. We all know this justification: the new instrument costs e.g. EUR 150’000.  With 150 samples over 2 years, costing EUR 1’000/sample externally pay-back time would be 2 years only: a convincing argument! But really?? Before coming to Truth #2, I would like to mention a fact which makes it indeed easy to invest into new equipment – regardless of any follow-up costs. The investment budget for a new instrument is simply a different “box” than the operational budget. It is common sense to allocate some money for new instruments. However, this investment budget is often being fully used, irrespective of whether or not the new instrument is indeed useful and cost efficient. 
 
Truth #2: operation, maintenance and expertise are expensive
A true pay-back time calculation needs to incorporate all operating costs such as working time plus maintenance, method developments, amortization and the development of the required expertise to actually use the given instrument. The more underutilized the instrument is the worse becomes the calculation due to an increasing part of fixed costs. Let’s assume the in-house operating costs of the case mentioned above can be brought down to EUR 500 /sample. In this case, pay-back time doubles to 4 years! Some details are provided in an example including an FTIR instrument of USD 20’000 investment and external costs of USD 10’000. In conclusion, realistic pay-back times of analytical instruments are often much higher than anticipated. External services appear costly at first sight but in fact, they are often highly cost-efficient if compared on a 1:1 basis. 
 
Myth #3: in-house experts are the best
Surely, in-house experts are often very good, especially with methods they always use. But what about the other methods? Last year, I have visited a company sophisticated on rheology using rotary viscosimeters. But they did not know about micro-rheology offering new possibilities in their case. It needs a good balance between the NIH-syndrome (not-invented-here) and curiosity plus openness for new methods.  
 
Truth #3: really good experts know when to ask for advice
 The solution for your analytical challenge may be in-house, but it might be also outside. Your experts are really good if they are curious, reach out to other experts and help to find the best analytical solution for you– and not just the one available. The first steps of external expertise are often free anyway. A short email or a phone call and you have more options to evaluate already. Surprisingly, I’m receiving these requests more often from development chemists than from analytical people. 
 
In conclusion, there are many rational arguments to be more open towards external analytical services – to save money and to increase the understanding of the product properties. 

When we had decide because of Covid19, if the annual IGC Symposium should take place in 2020, we did not expect this successful outcome. Instead of doing it onsite in person, we took the opportunity to offer it online. And suddenly the number or registrations increased rapidly. At the end we had more than 150 registrations from all over the world.

Another benefit of going online are the recordings that you can now watch afterwards, even if you did not attend the symposium. We published all those that we are allowed to publish on youtube. If you are interested in learning more about the applications and special details of inverse gas chromatography, you find the recordings below.

If you are interested in the slides you can download them here:

If you have any questions or requests, please contact us.

Our first online webinar "Introduction to Inverse Gas Chromatography (IGC) and Best Practice" on 8th June 2020 was a great success. More than 45 participants participated and actively engaged in the Q&A session. The initial objective of the webinar was to give newcomers in IGC a first understanding in this technology as a preparation for to 9th Int. IGC Symposium, 16th June 2020, see IGC Symposium website.

However, it seems, it was the beginning of an open, almost global dialogue about how to characterize powder and other surfaces by dynamic gas adsorption. 

The Q&A session after the presentation highlighted many open questions and uncertainties around IGC as a technique. You find the questions and some of the answers below. We plan to answer them in a separate blog post. ​Follow us and stay tuned.

Do you know, that highly quantitative values for diffusion coefficients, adsorption isotherms of methanol on zeolites and energy distribution functions, as well as detailed characterization of recycled and artificially aged catalysts can all be performed by perfectly controlled adsorption and desorption processes?
​We have entirely redefined an instrument also known under the name “Inverse Gas Chromatography”, short IGC. Today, our setup is the most versatile instrument to study all kind of physisorption processes – not only for catalysts, but for many other powders, fibers and plates too. 

We were so much looking forward to showing our poster (download below) about catalyst applications at the “53. Jahrestreffen Deutscher Katalytiker” scheduled for 11-13 March in Weimar – usually attracting around 600 experts! But: Due to the Corona crisis, this conference was cancelled. Now we are taking the online opportunity to explain the key features of our unique setup and explain the use by three very different applications. 

Key feature of our IGC instrument is very flexible injection of any kind of volatile “probe” substance into the gas stream – either at very low concentrations, ideally “infinite dilution”, or at high concentrations at defined p/p0, e.g. 0.3, to allow a saturation of the surface. In IGC terms, these two regions are called IGC-ID and IGC-FC (finite concentration). An autosampler and a most accurate dosing system allows up to 48 different probe substances. We usually use 15 different apolar and polar molecular probes to characterize surfaces in its different dimensions. 

A standard IGC characterization (IGC-ID) is done by using different n-alkanes at infinite dilutions to determine the disperse (apolar) surface energy 𝛾sd. Usually, we are adding seven different polar molecules ranging from chloroform to diethylether thereby covering electron acceptor (acidic) and donor (basic) probes. In the example, the customer wanted to characterize the changes of catalysts from fresh to used and the processes of recycling and artificially aging.  The analysis revealed very clearly, that the recycling process is not only far from restoring the original surface properties but also increasing apolar properties far beyond those of fresh or used catalysts. 

The ability to saturate the entire surface at a given p/p0 (IGC-FC) with any kind of probe molecule and to interpret the desorption isotherm in detail was used in a study of zeolites and methanol adsorption. The IGC-FC setup determines the adsorption isotherm, the specific surface area (BET), any irreversible adsorption and the Adsorption Energy Distribution Function (AEDF). The zeolites are very close in performance, but the adsorption of methanol and subsequent desorption revealed significant differences in the amount of irreversible bound methanol and in the distribution of the high energy sites. This way, it enabled a better selection and further optimization of the zeolites for application. 

Also, saturation at a given p/p0 and desorption allows the determination of diffusion coefficients (D) in porous systems. In a setup called Zero Length Column (ZLC), a very small amount of sample is exposed to a given p/p0 and the sudden desorption front interpreted using a ln(c/c0) plot to obtain D by fitting the desorption curve. In the given example, the diffusion coefficients of toluene, cyclooctane and n-octane were determined for two different alumina beads. 
​
These examples show the power of the experimental setup by injecting any kind of volatile probes at different concentrations and accurately determine the physisorption behavior. The IGC framework provides a solid background to determine disperse surface energies but many more values can be obtained, like diffusion coefficients or adsorption energy distribution functions. 

«Yesterday was a very good event!!!! Thanks for all the effort in organizing it!” – something must have been right, when you receive such an email after an event. It was a trial. For the first time, the companies Inolytix and Novitom together with SLS Techno Trans AG, the technology transfer of the Swiss Light Source, organized an event at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). Around 25 people found their way to Villigen and discovered the fascinating possibilities in 3D imaging for industry. 

Stefan Müller, SLS Techno Trans AG, introduced the whole PSI with some facts and figures, namely mentioning the 2100 employees and the 1’400 publications annually. But not only this. For SMEs, there is a special funding available called CALIPSOplus, which provides some (but not all…) services free of charge – a great possibility to try some new analytical tools! For more information see the link at WayforLight.eu. 

The collaboration of Inolytix, Novitom and SLS Techno Trans AG is supporting many of the unknown steps towards an effective and most easy access of companies. This includes efficient project management and reports, which can be used for the management too, as  Ralf Dümpelmann, CEO and founder of Inolytix, explained. 

Many practical examples from different industries as cosmetics, food and composite materials were provided by Barbara Fayard, CEO and cofounder of Novitom. One example was the change of the microstructure of a composite material over time in-situ at 300°C. It becomes clearly visible how the polymer matrix penetrates into the fibres and reduces the porosity to an acceptable level. 
 
Margie Olbinado, a scientist at PSI, explained the differences of microtomography and the nanotomography, as well as ptychographic X-ray nanotomography. The microtomography is very fast within seconds or minutes and objects of a few mm can be measured with resolutions up to 10 micrometers or  1 micrometer, respectively. While the ptychographic nanotomography achieves resolutions down 15 nm but requires beam times of several hours and very small samples. 

Additive Manufacturing, or more easy 3D-Printing, is not easy to optimize in terms of speed. Christian von Burg, CEO and founder of Sintratec AG, an innovative producer of 3D Printers for polymeric structures in Brugg, illustrated, how the microtomography and the 3D imaging helped them to optimize their operating conditions.  How accurately can be measured? This question was answered by Benjamin Bircher in high talk “Industrial high-resolution CT for metrology”.  It was fascinating to learn, that Metas, the Swiss institute for metrology, provides a very solid basis to produce and to measure accurately – definitely a Swiss speciality!

The experimental setups of micro- and nanotomography were in detail explained by the PSI researchers during a fascinating tour through the large hall of the Swiss Light Source, the only synchrotron facility in Switzerland. 
Do you have 3 dimensional objects – and the need to optimize and understand the inner structure? Contact us! We want to make you more successful. 

Visualization in 3D for new insights

Sometimes a good visualization helps to understand the problem. Like an x-ray image or even much better: like an MRI scan - a 3D image of a human brain or a tumor in an organ.

In material science, today's micro- and nanotomography goes a step further in terms of resolution. 3-dimensional structures below one micrometer and even in the nanometer range are possible. The beam lines of the Paul-Scherrer-Institut (PSI) at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) take advantage of extremely coherent x-ray sources and high energy levels. As part of the ETH-Zürich, this federal institute has all the capabilities to produce not only high resolution images, but also high speed images if required. 

Easy access for the Industry
Inolytix is committed to make the use of valuable and innovative analytical techniques as easy as possible for industrial customers. The need of the industry is discussed and translated into actual measurement plans together with the academic researcher. And not only this.

The best visualization requires excellent software and the experience to quantify for example pores and coatings in a stack of many hundreds of images for a full 3D analysis. That is the reason, why we work together with Novitom, a small industry-oriented company in Grenoble, France, with just the right skills for excellent interpretations. 

Discover the possibilities of Micro and Nanotomography on 7th November 2019

You can learn more about the possibilities of Micro and Nano Tomography and 3D imaging at this symposium. It will be held at the PSI in Villigen, where you will visit the SLS and see different analytical methods for 3D analysis and 3D imaging.

When you have questions about your 3D properties, e.g. the inner properties of 3D printed materials, foams or aerogels, cements, ceramics, catalysts or batteries, this symposium will provide you with answers. 

Date:                  7 November 2019
Time:                 13:00 - 17:00
Location:            PSI, Forschungsstrasse 111, 5232 Villigen

When you click on the 'Register' button below, you will see the detailed program.

BASF is using more and more Inverse Gas Chromatography (IGC) to characterize surface properties of particles of batteries, catalysts, building materials and many others. “IGC as a one-fits-all technique gives great – but hardly explored – details” Dr. Matthias Kellermeier, BASF, Material Physics, Ludwigshafen, Germany, summarized it perfectly during his talk “Characterizing complex surfaces of industrial relevance by inverse chromatography”. 

Ten speakers from industry and academia exchanged their experiences with IGC during the 7th International IGC Symposium, 19.06.2018 in Cologne – with participants from 8 countries. The basic principle is quite easy: “15-20 different gas probes are used like AFM-tips to explore the surface properties” Dr. Ralf Dümpelmann, Inolytix AG, Switzerland, explained. “Many polar, apolar, cyclic and branched molecules are used to provide surface energies, nanoroughness, polarities and electron donor and acceptor properties”. Picture: Steven Abbott with results of the discussion group. 

Practices & applications of IGC
However, the practices itself and the applications are very different, as the presentations showed. Dr. Peter Schiffels, Fraunhofer Inst. Bremen, showed the different surface qualities of lignin intended as precursor for bio-based carbon fiber production. Another practice was a good differentiation of industrial TiO2 samples shown by Sven Böhm, Kronos International, Leverkusen. In addition, the effect of different mills and grinding conditions on the mineral attapulgite was explained by Rachel Calvet, Ecoles des Mines, Albi, France. Other speakers provided examples about carbon black particles and zeolites.  

Current limitations of IGC
The principles of IGC as such are very useful, but often there seemed to be limitations in terms of instrumental setup (concentration range, non-symmetric peaks, number of probes) and also controversial methodologies (“nominal” surface coverage treated as “real”, no operation under “ideal diluted” conditions). As a result, the true potential of IGC often seems not fully explored – with BASF as a positive exception, as mentioned above.  

A new, automated and flexible setup
​Therefore, Dr, Eric Brendle, Adscientis SARL, France, complemented this challenge by explaining not only the requirements of an ideal setup but also the advances towards an automated and fully flexible IGC. Controlled and highly accurate syringes for the injection of gases and liquids provide not only “ideally diluted” conditions, but also exact p/p0 settings for desorption isotherms. Altogether an excellent step towards reliable, industrial applications.  

Finally, an interactive session and wrap-up presentations provided everyone a great picture of all the experiences, some limitations and many opportunities. Looking forward to see you next year in June... exact date and location to be announced!

This is the part of year to look forward to some time with family and friends, relax (we hope you can do so!) and look at the fading year 2017. And it is the time to wish you, our clients, our business partners and many more contacts a successful and prosperous New Year 2018!

Developing special areas with new customers worldwide
For Inolytix the year 2017 has brought a substantially broader customer base and exciting developments in surface characterisations, for example:  

• The presentation about Inverse Gas Chromatography (IGC) to determine Hansen Solubility Parameters (HSP) in York, UK, triggered many more relations and opportunities.
• How to differentiate lactose qualities or other organic powders? The sophisticated surface characterization was one other highlight with many more follow-ups, see our blog post.
• Surface – matrix interaction? The characterization of carbon fibres is another hot topic leading to a better understanding and product development.

We enjoy to be a catalyst and enabler for all those who are looking for demanding analytical services. Most often our customers are in the chemical industry here in Europe. But in 2017 - to some surprise - we also delivered to an institute in Israel, an innovative company in the USA and an university in Austria. The  services ranged from IGC, XPS, polymer and mechanical tests to micro- and nanotomography, depending on the demand of our clients.

Open collaboration with science-based approach
A positive support, a science-based approach and the thrive for improvements is at the heart of our business, now completing its fourth year, e.g.

• the annual IGC-Symposium which facilitates the exchange of industry and experts (the next symposium will by June 19th, 2018 in Cologne)
• the open collaboration among my strongest partner companies Adscientis and Porotec is the basis for a highly innovative, new IGC instrument (blog)
• and newsletters inform about topics like how to find scientific literature and how to get access to publications.  

Whatever the year 2018 brings to you – we wish you confidence, enthusiasm and a portion of luck, too.

In part 1 we gave some tips and hints how to FIND scientific literature using Google Scholar (lean!), SciFinder or ISI Web of Knowledge (expensive... unless you work in academia or a large corporation and get everything for  FREE) .

Great! Now you have the reference and probably the abstract, but you would like to check the full publication for some useful information. And there is the PAY button of 36 USD - what to do?

Paying is of course a good option. However, if you want to scan quite a few papers this could become easily very expensive... There are other ways!

We like to share our experiences of cost and time-efficient approaches. Today, we feature ACCESS, the second of three categories:

• FIND    
• ACCESS  
• STORE & RETRIEVE  

Featured tools today in the category ”ACCESS”
 
DeepDyve 

DeepDyve is the Spotify for scientific literature! You can read as many publications as you like, but you can not download them. The costs are about 1 USD per day, if a full year is "booked". And there is an allowance to print 20 and sometimes even 40 pages per month. Personally, I use DeepDyve since 3 years and are quite happy with it. Many publishers are supporting it, but not all (ACS not 😟). And search does not work with the DOI... but it is just great to view many different publications when researching a topic and not worrying about access rights or costs.  

ResearchGate

Officially, ResearchGate is the largest social networking site for scientists and researchers to ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. Inofficially, it is also a good way to share, respectively access papers. And when using Google Scholar the link to the respective document in ResearchGate is often even displayed on the right side. I believe it is legally a grey area, but it is often quite useful.

Sci-Hub

Sci-Hub is a pirate site “...to remove all barriers in the way of science”. Well, most likely 100% illegal (Elsevier filed 2015 a legal complaint...), but even Nature nominated the founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, among the top 10 people who mattered most in year 2016. And if you are not afraid of some obscure russian websites and you are desperate to get just this article, it can be an option...

Open Access Journals

Your lucky day! Open access journals are becoming more and more popular... also because there are options to get access without paying. In 2015 over 10'000 journals were open access journals. However, the publishers work must be paid somehow and in this case the authors, their respective universities and companies or other subsidising organisations pay to publish the articles.   
 
Finally

You want to use scientific information more? 
You need to use scientific information more to make better decisions?

We might help you - especially in the area of analytical methods, surfaces and interfaces.
An informal request and some answer is always free and often gives fresh thoughts in a new directions... 
​(contact@inolytix.com, +41 79 3129327)