Collaboration to Develop an Advanced Range of Raman Microscopes

Materials characterization company Malvern Instruments (Malvern, UK) and Kaiser Optical Systems (Ann Arbor, MI, USA), a leading supplier of Raman analyzers and components for spectroscopy, announced a development collaboration that will enhance the product portfolios of both companies.

As part of the process of bringing the resulting new products to market, both companies will be seeking the involvement of potential customers at the final stages of product development and for beta evaluations later in 2009.

Malvern Instruments, a supplier of systems for characterizing particulate materials, will integrate Kaiser RamanRxn system analyzers and probes into its Morphologi platform. The Morphologi's high-performance automated image analysis will then intelligently target and guide the collection of Raman data on a range of particulate and solid materials. Used in conjunction with ISys, Malvern's chemical imaging software, this approach has many and varied applications. The initial focus will be on pharmaceutical, life science, and forensic applications. Here sophisticated sample and particle handling, automated image recognition, and chemical characterization combine to move Raman spectroscopy to a new level of intelligence and automation.

These patent-pending combinations will enable for the first time this intelligent, targeted, and statistically robust approach to performing Raman microscopy on a variety of spatially and chemically complex samples.

Paul Walker, managing director of Malvern Instruments, said, "We are very excited by the prospects for this collaboration which builds on the strengths of both organizations. It will significantly enhance Malvern's capabilities to solve the material characterization problems of its customers in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.”

Kaiser Optical Systems is a manufacturer and supplier of holographic optics and Raman spectroscopy platforms for a range of laboratory and industrial process applications. As a direct result of this collaboration, the company will distribute an exclusive version of Malvern's ISys data processing and analysis software, and a new system control-software platform specifically developed for its Raman microprobe and PhAT-enabled Raman WorkStation range.

Harry Owen, director of business development at Kaiser, said, "The addition of Malvern's software to our Raman WorkStation offers our customers significantly improved performance. Raman spectroscopy applications such as chemical mapping, wellplate analysis, and tablet analysis will benefit from the combination of our PhAT technology and the powerful imaging capability offered by Malvern's ISys data processing and analysis software.”

Malvern Instruments is a global company that develops, manufactures, and markets analytic systems used in characterizing a wide variety of materials, from bulk powders to the latest nanomaterials and delicate macromolecules. Innovative technologies and powerful software produce systems that provide industrially relevant data enabling customers to make the connection between micro (e.g ., particle size) and macro (bulk) material properties (rheology) and chemical composition (chemical imaging). Malvern Instruments is a subsidiary of Spectris plc, the precision instrumentation, and controls company.

Kaiser Optical Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rockwell Collins, is a designer and manufacturer of holographic optical elements, Raman analyzers, and components for spectroscopy.

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Malvern Instruments
Kaiser Optical Systems