Andreas Schaefer

Dr. rer. nat., Staff Researcher

A new Surface Area and Porosity Laboratory - ongoing


The division of Applied Chemistry at Chalmers has invested into building a new laboratory for physisorption and chemisorption experiments. The old Laboratory was hosting a 21 year old Tristar 3000 instrument from Micromeritics and an ASAP 2020 plus instrument (also Micromeritics) that both will live on in the new lab together with new instrumentation that I cannot disclose here at this point.
I have designed the new laboratory from ground up and it is honestly a lot fun to have this opportunity but also quite some responsibility. Tearing down a wall and having in total 160 meters of gas lines put is not an inexpensive endeavor, to say the least. The new laboratory will now finally also have a fume hood and a ventilated storage for save handling and storing of less friendly chemicals. In total 10 different gases will be available for different experiments to cover the range of micro- and mesoporous materials, i.e. materials with pore sizes of 0.5 - 50 nm. A vapor source makes the study of water adsorption or the adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) possible even at temperatures above ambient thanks to a thermostat. I am going to  write a detailed entry for the new lab later on before it gets way to specific here. For now, I want to show off some pictures from the ongoing - edit: or now finished - building process. 
The Laboratory is now built and ready for experiments. Meanwhile I keep working on growing the range of experiments we can do in the lab. The lab is supposed to be as versatile as reasonably possible to accommodate the various activities in the division of Applied Chemistry and the chemistry department but also outside of that.
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Update: Feb. 2026
Finally, after waiting over 8 weeks for the delivery, a bottle of krypton arrived. Now the task is to set it up and do a few tests. With that we will now be able to measure very low surface areas < 0.5 m2/g and small amounts of samples more accurately.

I also hope that there will be some updates very soon on a new instrument that is going to move into the lab.
[Picture]
The new laboratory logo