Coatings & Thin Films

Coatings and thin films are designed and developed to establish or alter various surface characteristics and in many cases the relationship between structure, morphology, and material properties is indispensable for the optimization of the material design. WITec imaging systems are particularly well-suited to contribute to the analysis of multi-component coating systems and thin films by visualizing the distribution of individual chemical components and the physical properties of different material components.

For investigating coatings and thin films the depth resolution of the imaging systems is of enormous importance in discriminating thin layers in the z-direction. Due to depth resolution being highly dependent on the confocality of the microscope, WITec imaging systems are designed specifically to provide exceptional confocal imaging performance in depth scans.

WITec’s highly versatile instruments can combine various imaging techniques to significantly increase the insights provided by measurement results. Possible combinations which can be included in a single microscope setup include confocal Raman imaging, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Nearfield-Microscopy (SNOM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Confocal Raman imaging provides chemical information, AFM detects topography, structure, and physical properties such as stiffness, adhesion, etc. of the sample’s surface, and SNOM high-resolution measurements can optically reach beyond the diffraction limit. All WITec instrument configurations can be upgraded at any point to adapt the system to new or extended requirements.