Failure Analysis

When coatings fail it can at best lead to cosmetic problems and at worst lead to product failure. Ensuring the cause of the failure is identified is essential in correcting the problem.

Sensitive surface and depth profiling techniques such as XPS, SIMS and SEM can be utilised to investigate failures including:

• Migration of species from layer-to-layer in a multi-layer coating
• Delaminations
• Disbondments
• Surface defects
• Contamination
• Staining.