Chris Moore, VP of Technology at Covalent, comments: “Our new, state-of-the-art Thermo Scientific Nexsa gives us access to capabilities that are unique in our industry. The combination of XPS, UPS and ISS technologies, an upgraded charge mitigation system, along with faster measurement and analysis software allow us to solve customer problems that would not have been doable with older generation systems.” Covalent will be one of only a handful of service labs worldwide to operate a Nexsa system.

Surface chemical analysis is critical both in product development and manufacturing optimization for industries ranging from microelectronics to pharmaceuticals. XPS has long been one of the best techniques for such analysis. It is quantitative, acutely surface specific, and can assess oxidation states, chemical bonding environments, electronic properties, and more. UPS and ISS are newer techniques which provide complementary measurements of surface potential and valence band properties, as well as chemical composition of the outermost atomic monolayer (respectively). All 3 can now be executed in correlative analysis to more holistically evaluate the surface properties of your material.

Beyond its adaptability and cutting-edge integration of the 3 techniques, the Nexsa also resolves several limitations of past XPS instrumentation. Most significantly, its newly designed source, detector, and automation systems enable total-area maps in minutes with a lateral resolution down to 10 µm, without sacrificing meaningful chemical sensitivity.