ADVANCE | Drop Shape
Progressing surface science drop by drop
Everything a drop image can reveal
In ADVANCE, even the most complex measuring tasks around drop shape analysis are represented on a clear and easy-to-use interface. With just a few steps you can prepare software-controlled measurements using a high degree of automation for tasks such as measuring a solid’s surface free energy, position mapping, or tilting experiments.
The very robust image-fitting algorithm determines the contact angle even in the face of severe interference, such as extraneous light or shadows from other drops. When analyzing drops jetted from a print head, ADVANCE can automatically measure their speed and jetting behavior even when satellite drops are formed.
Measure the SFE with one click within a second
Determining surface free energy (SFE) used to be time-consuming, having to dose drops of at least two liquids, to measure their contact angles and then to calculate the SFE. Not anymore! ADVANCE carries out all these steps automatically within just one second, using our patented Liquid Needle dosing technology. After a push of a button, drops of two liquids are dosed and recorded in parallel, followed by precise image analysis and automated SFE calculation.
Capture every important moment with automatic background recording
Get the maximum information from a wetting process without having to start a measurement at the right time. The ADVANCE background recording automatically saves everything that happens in a wide time range. After pausing the recording, you can go back in time to analyze the interesting part of the background video.
Accessing and reanalyzing drop shape images very quickly
ADVANCE makes it easy to access the drop's image for each result – just pick it in the result list or graph. The fitting method used to determine the contact angle can be changed very quickly for each item or even the complete list of results. This is of great help, particularly when the optimal fitting method needs to be selected subsequently.
More knowledge about the solid-liquid contact with Adhesion Analysis
The Adhesion Analysis makes the most of your SFE results by calculating scientific parameters for the interfacial contact between a solid and a liquid. Using measured or manually entered data, values for work of adhesion, contact angle, interfacial tension, and spreading coefficient are calculated. The results help you to assess the quality of the contact. You also gain information about how to improve adhesion, for example by raising the polarity of a material up to the optimum value.
Best-in-class image analysis
The ideal algorithm for real-world surfaces
ADVANCE has an important share in the precision of contact angle measurement. The sophisticated evaluation algorithm is very robust when it has to deal with imperfect images, which may stem from contaminations, samples that are not homogeneous, or just further drops that have already been dosed. This is how ADVANCE makes fully automatic analysis almost always possible.