Partnership agreed to scan electrochemical microscopy

A team from the laboratory, headed by Prof Hubert Girault, will work closely with AMETEK engineers to integrate a range of probe technologies to address a broad spectrum of material test requirements, including electrodes and arrays for testing coatings that prevent corrosion, biological tissue studies, electrochemical catalysts screening, and more.

Soft probe technology overcomes a number of well-known limitations with traditional SECM. To remove topographic effects from SECM data, existing systems use electronics and transducer systems that not only add significant cost to the SECM system, but also suffer from either slow scanning times or use hard probes, which can damage fragile material such as biologic samples.

In contrast to those limitations, the Swiss team’s soft probe technology has been shown to form a permanent contact with the sample, allowing for constant probe – sample separation. In addition, the flexibility of the soft probes allows them to traverse highly corrugated surfaces and rounded objects such as tumour samples. That flexibility is critical to allowing SECM image of delicate samples without damaging them.