• DOI:10.1063/1.4972253
• Corpus ID: 11853493

A stress-controlled shear cell for small-angle light scattering and microscopy.

@article{Aime2016ASS,
  title={A stress-controlled shear cell for small-angle light scattering and microscopy.},
  author={Stefano Aime and Laurence Ramos and Jean-Marc Fromental and Guillaume Pr{\'e}v{\^o}t and R Jelinek and Luca Cipelletti},
  journal={The Review of scientific instruments},
  year={2016},
  volume={87 12},
  pages={
          123907
        }
}

• S. Aime, L. Ramos, +3 authors L. Cipelletti
• Published 22 March 2016
• Engineering
• The Review of scientific instruments

We develop and test a stress-controlled, parallel plates shear cell that can be coupled to an optical microscope or a small angle light scattering setup, for simultaneous investigation of the rheological response and the microscopic structure of soft materials under an imposed shear stress. In order to minimize friction, the cell is based on an air bearing linear stage, the stress is applied through a contactless magnetic actuator, and the strain is measured through optical sensors. We discuss the contributions of inertia and of the small residual friction to the measured signal and demonstrate the performance of our device in both oscillating and step stress experiments on a variety of viscoelastic materials.