Microspectrophotometers are used to detect contaminants on precision devices.
UV microscope image of a contaminated hard disk read-write head.
Contamination analysis uses UV-visible-NIR microscopes, microspectrophotometers and Raman microspectrometers to locate and identify contaminants.
Contamination Analysis is a difficult problem for any failure analysis laboratory. It is especially challenging if the contamination has occured in a supposedly clean environment. If the contaminated device is a precision device, such as an integrated circuit or a hard disk drive, the contaminants may also be microscopic in scale. Certainly, the critical dimensions of the device are microscopic. And as many contaminants are invisible to the human eye due to their chemical composition, more sensitive analysis tools are required.Due to the fact that many of the contaminants are UV active and the components themselves are microscopic, ultraviolet microscopes, microspectrophotometers and Raman microspectrometers such as those made by CRAIC are irreplaceable. These units are not only used to locate contaminants but are used to determine their source by both microscopy and microspectroscopy. Microspectrophotometers also have additional capabilities to measure thin film thickness and even absolute reflectivity.
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