With over 10 years of experience, SEAM Technology Gateway leads the industry in contaminant identification, foreign material identification, Surface Analysis and provide support for industries in solving challenges and better understand the product.
What is Foreign Material/Contamination Analysis?
Contamination detection, identification and troubleshooting within any industry is a critical tool in ensuring product quality and customer satisfaction. These issues are unpredictable, both in terms of their nature and their size, and as such, can be costly in terms of lost productivity. Confidential, rapid, contamination identification and analysis is an invaluable tool in ensuring product quality and maintaining consumer faith in a product. SEAM provides a comprehensive service to help industry professionals identify, and eliminate, unwanted contaminants in their products. From contaminant particles ruining yields in a semiconductor fab, to errant pigment agglomerates in a polymer packaging application, or unwanted metallic shards in food. All of these issues are of concern to manufacturers and to consumers alike and can greatly affect a company’s income and customer confidence.
Techniques Used in SEAM
SEAM has over ten years’ experience in the identification of contaminants and takes a forensic approach to the identification of unknown materials in finished products and raw materials. Contaminants can be mixed in solids, liquids, foreign inclusions in polymers or fibres. Typical analyses gives details of the shape, size and composition of the contaminants using analytical techniques such as optical microscopy, electron microscopy (SEM/EDX), FTIR/ATR and GC-MS. Typical contaminants analysed are fibres, polymer materials, grease, oil, paint particles, machine residue, dirt, staining and also organic materials.
SEAM staff often work with clients to compare the contaminant to known materials in order to identify the source of the contamination. SEAM’s x-ray analysis equipment allows foreign particles to be located within an object, which can then be extracted for identification. SEAM has vast experience and specialist insight allowing quick determination of the correct analytical approach to employ to solve a wide range of contamination issues faced by clients.