Jury Impressed by Correlative Particle Analysis

On 6 February 2013, the Microscopy business group of Carl Zeiss received second prize in the 2013 CLEAN! Fraunhofer Cleanliness Technology Award for its Correlative Particle Analyzer (CAPA). The judges of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology and Automation (IPA) honored the three award winners on day two of the Cleanroom Lounge trade fair in Karlsruhe. "By bridging scanning electron and light microscopy, Correlative Particle Analyzer is revolutionizing cleanliness technology," said the Fraunhofer Institute commenting on its success.

Through correlative particle analysis, Carl Zeiss is establishing a connection between scanning electron and light microscopy which did not exist in the past. Dr. Jati Kastanja and Stefanie Freitag, product managers responsible for correlative particle analysis at Carl Zeiss, describe the advantages of the product: "The combination of hard and software interfaces allows users to retrieve particles of a sample in the scanning electron microscope which they had previously detected in the light microscope." Automatically and quickly, users may consolidate quantitative information from light microscopy with element information from energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDX). Using correlative particle analysis, quality controllers classify and characterize particles in accordance with ISO 16232. Judge Thomas Wollstein from VDI sums it up as follows: "This opens up new possibilities in quality assurance for purity and cleanliness." Industrial quality assurance processes such as the specification of component cleanliness in the automotive area, i.e. technical cleanliness, benefit from this time-saving method of analysis.

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