Dr's Leaper and Armitage have secured funding for an atomic force microscope for applications in the powder technology, pharmaceutical and biomaterials sectors. The system chosen is the Agilent 5420, which has been recently installed.

Initial projects will focus on characterisation of a wide range of powder surfaces, inlcuding application of force measurement techniques for analysis of particle-particle interacions. Work has also sucessfully commenced on characterising the surface topography of a range of new modified titanium surfaces.