The detection and measurement of surface contamination and coatings is important in a number of different industries. Metal parts need to be free of cutting oils before painting -- lubrication coatings must be uniform -- the cleanliness of pharmaceutical reactors must be validated before returning them to use. The patented Remspec SpotView® system, with a grazing angle probe, provides a way to measure the thickness of very thin coatings down to the scale of a few tens of Angstroms or contamination to tenths of micrograms per square centimeter. SpotView® is ideal for studying surface contamination and verifying the cleanliness of large metal objects such as pharmaceutical batch reactors. With very high sensitivity and the flexibility of a long cable, Remspec's SpotView® grazing angle probe systems mark a major step forward in spectroscopic analysis of thin films, contamination and cleaning validation. In the turnkey SpotView® a Stirling cycle cooler allows an MCT detector to be used without the need for liquid nitrogen giving complete freedom to the operator in how they place the analysis head. For laboratory applications where large objects are involved or a low cost system is required for method development or evaluation the SpotView-Lab™ accessory system with a liquid nitrogen cooled MCT detector is available. BioPharm magazine article

This head features an onboard MCT detector with a Stirling cycle cooler, all prealigned and housed in a rugged plastic casing. With a flexible 3 m fiber-optic cable, the system is easy to use anywhere and the spot size (1.25 by 11.5 cm) means that uneven contamination is not a problem for SpotView®.		The patented SpotView® head delivers the mid-IR signal (shown in red) to the surface, and returns it to the on-board detector, at a "grazing angle" for maximum sensitivity.

The mid-IR spectrum of a 19 Angstrom thick lubricating layer on a hard disk drive (in red) is compared with the spectrum of an unlubricated drive (in blue).