Helping You Engineer the Alloys of the Future

Good control of surface finish and roughness is key for many applications: wear resistance, cosmetic appearance, or coating. Varying surface finishes may be created by methods such as grinding, grit blasting, coating, or corrosion. Each technique creates different surface features: these may be beneficial or detrimental depending on the application. Coatings may also be applied to your materials – functional, protective, or cosmetic – and the surface properties of coatings will dominate the behavior of your component in service. Quantifying and assessing the surface properties is key for routine quality assurance as well as research and development into new coating and surface preparation methods.

• Roughness
• Peak height
• Volume and shape of asperities or pits
• Embedded particles
• Damage assessment – wear, scratches, or impact
• Surface contamination
• Coating thickness and profile
• 3D mapping

Using ZEISS confocal microscopes, your surfaces can be mapped with high planar resolution (0.5 µm) and extremely high lateral resolution (120 nm) to build up a complete 3D picture of your surface. ConfoMap software offers you a full suite of surface analysis features including full dimensional and statistical measurement, ISO roughness measurement, and advanced visualization capabilities. ZEISS scanning electron microscopes and EDS systems further support all your needs for high depth of field imaging, compositional analysis, and large-area mapping.