Thursday, October 2, 2008
2008 R&D 100 Winner
Drug coating uniformity. Wafer defect analysis. Polymer film distribution. High level quality control and systematic research tasks can benefit from automated microscopy systems that can do several tasks as once. The Automated Confocal Raman & Atomic Force Microscopy–alpha 500 from WITec GmbH, Ulm, Germany, is the first to blend the chemical 3-D imaging capability of confocal Raman microscopy with the structural surface analytical ability of atomic force microscopy (AFM) in an automated system for large samples.
Unique to the alpha500 is the AFM objective, which allows the user to switch between optical/Raman and AFM modes by rotating the objective turret without moving or transferring samples. The design of this objective allows lateral spectral Raman data collection along with AFM information. Spectral acquisition times are down to 760 sec through the use of a spectroscopic electron-multiplying CCD detector, and the entire system is controlled with a digital field programmable gate array-based chip.
Finally, the motorized sample stage, which has a travel range of 150 mm x 100 mm allows for multi-area/multi-point measurements or overview scans on an arbitrary, user-defined number of measurement points without any online process control.
Technology
Confocal Raman & Atomic force microscope
Developer
WITec GmbH
