Material Analysis

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is one of the most important and versatile techniques for material testing and characterization.

SEM offers high resolution imaging capability and when coupled with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), it provides pinpoint elemental composition for material analysis.

With advanced application, it can also perform elemental x-ray mapping.

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is useful for testing and characterizing different materials at a near-atomic level, including polymers, nanoparticles and coatings.

TEM is especially useful for characterizing copolymer blends to see how well the different polymers are mixed.

In addition, TEM can achieve much higher resolution than SEM, which makes it a valuable technique for nanoparticle size distribution measurement.

Raman spectroscopy is useful for characterizing materials including nanoparticles, active pharmaceutical ingredients and raw materials, polymers, coatings, and impurities. Raman spectroscopy gives molecular structure and crystallinity information on a material. When coupled with Raman chemical imaging, it can provide molecular information on a pharmaceutical formulation for tablets, stents, inhalants, and different layers of coatings in a packaging material.

Raman chemical imaging of a drug formulation

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is one of the most robust techniques for material testing. FTIR is extremely useful for material identification and analysis of molecular functional groups.

Comparison of an unknown sample to a reference spectrum from the FTIR library