What we learned from TR-IA sounding rocket experiments: Colloidal Crystallization

Abstract

The effect of micorgravity on the growth of colloidal crystals were studied using TR-IA #5 sounding rocket launched in 1996. This was the first flight experiments on colloidal materials in Japanese microgravity programs. Polystyrene latex were carefully deionized using ion-exchange resin. Major difficulties encountered in executing micorgravity experiments were maintaing ionic concentration at very low level during the preparation of flight. The importance of selection of cell materials and suitable operations that realize the expected purity of deionized water is mentioned.