Automotive industry and automotive supply

Material properties represent decisive factors, granting high quality and great performance of any component –be that an item for chassis, propulsion systems or electrics/electronics. Aluminum, sheet metals, special steels, light metal alloys and ceramics are often employed as basic materials.

For the optimization of the surface properties of those materials, heat treatment and surface finishing techniques as well as the application of special lacquers play an increasingly important role. As soon as a suitable material is modified by any kind of surface treatment, it needs to be thoroughly examined by reliable analytical methods. In the case of surface modification, the major criteria to be examined comprise layer thickness and chemical composition of the surface coating but also of the underlying bulk material.

All of these parameters can easily be determined at once using the Glow Discharge Analyzers GDA 650 HR or GDA 750 HR by Spectruma Analytik. Operating in the so-called depth profiling mode, layer thicknesses between a few nanometers and several hundreds of micrometers can be detected. The relative depth resolution is 5-10 % of the detected depth. All elements of the periodic table including H, Li, Na, C, N, P and O can be analyzed with detection limits ranging from 0.1 to 10 ppm.

Often, defects of a component (like material inhomogeneities) arise during the manufacturing process. Thus, regularly and meticulous production and quality controls are required.

Also in the field of production, the Glow Discharge Analyzer by Spectruma Analytik provide the best service. For production controls, the models GDA 150 HR and GDA-Alpha are particularly convenient. Apart from their accurate analytical performance, they offer a lot of practical advantages. Analyses with the Spectruma-GDAs are very time-saving, since one measurement takes only several minutes and no laborious and time-consuming sample preparation is required. Samples can be directly analyzed as received from the production. Furthermore, all Spectruma-GDAs can be programmed to iden­tify certain desired conditions (e.g. maximum/minimum concentration or layer thickness) automatically. So measurements can be conducted quickly and effortlessly even by untrained operators.

In summary, the Spectruma Glow Discharge Analyzers are the perfect instruments for fast and reliable measurements for research and production.

For further information on the Glow Discharge Analyzers please follow the link.