Microscopic Imagery Lab

Space Technology Under the Microscope

The KSC Chemistry Lab can provide microscopic imagery and analysis through the use a wide variety microscopic techniques. The use of EVO Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectrometers, which allow for highly detailed resolution of the form and structure of both materials and life science applications on uncoated and on nonconductive samples such as swabs or tape pulls.  This resource can be used for a wide array of purposes, including, for example, identifying contaminants or documenting materials processing on an elemental level.  Other microscopy techniques are:

• Optical stereo microscopy with coaxial illumination
• Transmitted Polarized light microscopy
  • Differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy
  • Fluorescence microscope (Blue-Green-UV)
• Fourier transform infrared microscopy
• Dispersive Raman microscopy
• EVO Scanning Electron Microscope with energy and wavelength dispersive spectroscopy  

Coaxial illumination exploits the use of a light path coincident to the optical path allowing for the imaging of thin films or contaminates to be able to be observed when no other optical technique can observe them.

Ultra thin sheets of Polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) can only be observed under coaxial illumination.

 Monographic image of a weld line under coaxial illumination.