Light Microscopy

Metallurgical Microscopy - the traditional tool for looking at cross-sections and metallic grain structures at up to 1000X

Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Analytical Electron Microscopy (AEM) – range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times magnification. Details of crystal structure and chemistry.

Reflected Light Interference - contrast microscopy - a specialized form of imaging to view surface topography in color. Also for polished sections of samples such as concrete

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) or other scanned probe microscopies – for atomic to micron scale surface features, including chemistry, physical properties and topography.

Polarized Light Microscopy (POL)- the traditional tool for petrography usually up to 400X. Samples usually “petrographic” cross-sections

X-Ray Mapping and Line Analysis – elemental spatial distribution

Scanning Electron Microscopy - covers the range from 13 to 50,000X

Quantitative Image Analysis – All images, at any scale, can be digitized and then image analysis techniques can be applied to quantify any spatial characteristics in the images. This includes number of objects, size and shape of objects, orientation, perimeter, grain size and virtually anything else you can imagine.

Materials analysis involves the determination of the physical and chemical properties of all sorts of materials, solids, liquids and gases, of any composition at all. Out of the effectively infinite number of properties that could be measured or determined, the analyst has the interesting job of providing for the client just those that matter for the solution of their problem.

Most analyses appropriately start at the macro-level, what you can see with the naked eye. But it's just in the nature of things that very soon we begin to want to know more about the micro-level. There are three basic kinds of "modern" microscopies:

• those that use light to form the image
• those that use electrons
• those that use touch or some other physical or chemical signal. These are often known as "scanned ii probe microscopies."

MATCO staff members have deep expertise in all of these complex and complementary techniques. They go far beyond the traditional metallurgist's reflected light microscopy. We can use them all to understand the complex issues that are usually represented as materials failure.