Physical Electronics XPS and TOF-SIMS instruments are routinely used to characterize the surfaces of implantable medical devices, study the release of drugs from delivery platforms, and more recently to support basic medical research with TOF-SIMS characterization of tissue sections.

• Drug Absorption
• 3D Characterization of a Drug Eluting Coating

Polymeric materials are widely used for structural materials, and coatings in many research and industrial applications. Polymers are often chemically inert and require surface modification to promote properties such as adhesion and wettability. The use of PHI XPS and TOF-SIMS instruments to detect and characterize surface modification or contamination of polymer surfaces is critical to the successful end use of many polymeric materials.

Thin films and coatings are used or applied to an almost limitless range of applications to provide a specific performance characteristic for a broad range of industrial products. These include coatings that provide antistatic properties, corrosion resistance, reduce wear, and promote adhesion; as well as thin films for optical devices, mirrors, semiconductor devices, magnetic media, food wrap, etc.

Corrosion and wear, and coatings to prevent corrosion and wear are often studied by XPS to provide quantitative chemical state information and by TOF-SIMS to provide molecular identification if organic materials are involved.

Surface analysis techniques are ideally suited to characterize the nanometer protective coatings and magnetic layers that make up today’s magnetic media. In addition to characterizing the magnetic media, surface analysis equipment plays a key role in the development of read/write heads and the detection and characterization of contaminants on components throughout the disk drive.

Microelectronic devices typically consist of a series of thin films that have been patterned to produce a device. The use of surface analysis instruments to characterize the composition of thin films or patterned structures and detect contaminants or process residues is critical to the development of new materials, manufacturing processes, and increasing product yield.