The Smartstream is designed to be used with dry air from a high purity version of Oxford Cryosystems’ quiet and reliable dry air unit.
This dry air is split into two streams, one of which is cooled by passing it through heat exchangers mounted on a mini Stirling Cooler built into the Smartstream. The cold dry air is then passed out of the nozzle and over the sample. Heaters and sensors built into the Smartstream head ensure excellent temperature stability of 0.1 K. The second stream of dry air is regulated to create a room temperature shield flow, which avoids the possibility of ice build-up on the sample.
The new Smartstream design means that unlike comparable systems, constant pumping is no longer required. Instead, the system will hold vacuum for a period of 6 – 12 months, when like a Cryostream, it will simply need evacuation.