Testing
We select and conduct tests that best suit your needs and those of your product, utilizing our wide range of equipment to ensure its quality and safety.
Objective. To know the origin of the defect in fine jewelry pieces.
Our customer, a jewelry manufacturer, has detected the appearance of stains on the metal surface of one of its pieces.
This failure has not been unique and has also occurred in the following production runs. This is an urgent problem and we need to know the origin in order to be able to act quickly.
Solution. We characterize by FIB-SEM and XPS and search for the origin.
The key to success in this project was the speed and agility to solve our client’s problem.
First of all, we made the selection of the characterization techniques that best fit this quality problem. Two techniques were defined: FIB-SEM and XPS. We applied these techniques on pieces with the failure and on pieces without failure.
During the characterization by FIB-SEM, when performing ion cutting, we could observe that the defect appeared in the most superficial layers. In addition, we performed a chemical composition analysis by EDX in these layers to know if there had been any type of contamination or foreign element.
In the XPS characterization, where we analyzed the composition in the first 5-10 nm, we were able to observe that the elements Cr and Fe, in the case of samples with defects, were in a type III oxidation state and in the samples without defects, in a type 0 state.
Traces of an element that can cause pitting corrosion and give rise to metallic ions generating an electrical potential difference that can cause oxidation were also located.
The joint analysis of FIB-SEM, EDX and XPS results allowed us to identify the origin of the failure and our client was able to take the necessary actions in its production process to prevent this defect occur again.
