On Aug 5, 2009, at 8:13 PM, Richard Mayes wrote:
Todd,
Are you working with oxygen sensitive or moisture sensitive samples (or
both)? If it's just moisture sensitive, then you can use regular
2-sided tape from your local office supply and polypropylene film to
seal samples in polycarbonate or aluminum holders (or even pellets if
you're lucky enough to be able to press pellets that hold their
shape). Chemplex Industries is where I have gotten the polypropylene
films I have used (and Kapton as well - www.findtape.com also has a good
selection of Kapton tape).
I used this method with many samples that involved heavily chlorided
titanium on silica and had few problems if they're used within 5-7 days
after packing in a glove box (the samples with problems resulted from
improperly sealed samples). You can get jars (baby food jars work very
well to ship individual samples) to store the samples for shipping and
if you pack the jars in the glove box, you will have the box atmosphere
in the jars, for a little while anyway.
A note on oxygen sensitivity (and to an extent moisture sensitivity):
you probably already know this, but I'll say it anyway...if cardboard
is present in the role of Kapton tape, you may have oxygen/water
diffusion from the cardboard for a few days after you take it into the
box. Our rule of thumb was to pull vacuum on anything involving
cardboard for at least 48 hrs before taking it into the box. All that
to say, take your supplies into the box a few days ahead of time to
allow your box catalyst to take care of any residual oxygen/water that
make their way in.
HTH,
-Richard