Manufacturing often requires two or more dissimilar materials to be robustly joined. In paint and coating systems, adhesives, welding, printed packaging or holographic films and composite materials the interface where the materials meet is as important as the bulk materials. Understanding how and why interfaces fail is critical for ongoing business.

Poor adhesion between dissimilar materials can be by design rather than misfortune. Mould release of polymers and composite materials are typically either aided by materials formulation additions, die lubrication or intermediate release films.

Materials are attacked by the environment shortening their functional life without the correct protection or by inappropriate design. This includes aqueous corrosion, high temperature oxidation in addition to degradation.

Corrosion in water containing environments can be the result of disimilar materials being in contact giving galvanic corrosion or within a single metal type by pitting of crevice corrosion driven by different local oxygen concentrations all promoted the presence of aggresive ions.

Plastics, rubbers and paint coatings can suffer from degradation due to the environment they are exposed to or due to poor chemical compatability.  Failures can be promoted by poor formulation choices.  The mechanisms of failure can be determined with sufficient expertise to interpret the significance of the analytical findings. 

Measurement of types, sizes, shapes of particles on various substrates with particular emphasis on the pharmaceutical industry’s need for product validation.

Identification of unknown particulates or dusts within products or processes.. Contamination can occur in many types of industry, we can offer help from a quick assessment to a comprehensive type matching exercise to identify the particles and their likely source.

This section describes how the laboratory systematically identifies particles and tracks them back though the customers process to the source and ultimately eliminate the problem.

Deformulation of chemical products to determine their composition, how they are manufactured and substitute or improve recipes to stimulate or improve the products performance.

Detailed physical and chemical reverse engineering of products and processes to determine how and what they have been made of for patent infringements and competitor analysis reasons to steer customer’s product development activities.

Determination of physical faults (e.g. Short Circuits, Open Circuits); Reverse engineering of product and manufacturing process,  identification of unknown contamination and recomendations of containment actions and problem solutions.

Diagnosing and eliminating product and process contamination including those following cleaning, degreasing and subsequent rinse processes is often vital.  Contaminants can be layers, stains or particulate in nature and the laboratory can highlight the root cause as well as recommend remedial actions and process change solutions.

Chemical and electrochemical treatments are used for a  variety of reasons so their performance and stability during application and as the resultant surface can be critical for function, operation life and even in terms of downstream process interactions.

Plastics and rubbers normally contain inorganic filler materials.  Their particle physical, size, shape, chemistry and volume fractions provide excellent fingerprint for the material for traceability. 

Independent centre for design, consultancy and support for applications using electron emission and electron optics. Provide expertise involving thermionic oxide cathodes or impregnated / dispenser cathodes for use in Klystrons, Travelling Wave Tubes (TWT), Magnetrons, X-ray sources, CRT, head up displays, valves.

Chemical analysis of the nicotine solutions used in electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) to determine concentrations and purity.