Krüss
Whether a surface must be very smooth or show a certain texture or degree of roughness, the new Surface Roughness Analyzer (SRA; photo) precisely pictures the topographic condition of a surface and provides information for optimizing the material or production process. Contactless, quickly, and with an extremely high resolution, the SRA delivers a 3-D image of a sample’s surface and the correlating data to exactly describe its topography. Analyses with the SRA also help to evaluate the contribution of roughness to the wettability of a sample or to the adhesion of coatings. The SRA uses the confocal microscopy technique to create the spatial representation of the surface. This happens by stacking layers of 2-D images, each one with a very small depth of focus, while lowering the optics with extremely tiny increments, leading to a height resolution down to 10 nm. — Krüss GmbH, Hamburg, Germany