First Ten Ångstroms designs and manufactures specialty scientific instrumentation with sophisticated software. The parent firm was incorporated in 1984. Our subsidiary, NanoDispense Inc, was added in 2003 with the purpose of handling the design and engineering while the parent company focuses on the manufacturing. The FTA200 Dynamic Contact Angle Analyzer was introduced in 1995, and followed earlier custom instruments for contact angle measurement. The FTA1000 line of products was released in 2001 with a much broader set of capabilities. In 2013, we released our newest generation of instruments (Falcon, Eagle and Raptor). These newest products represent another huge leap in our hardware and software accomplishments. Much of our work is custom, so feel free to inquire about your specific needs.

 

Application Areas

 

Contact Angle

Contact angles describe the shape of a fluid drop in contact with a solid. FTÅ instruments measure these by imaging the drop on a CCD camera and analyzing the captured images on a personal computer.

Contact angle measurements are used industrially to determine the cleanliness of surfaces, with applications from electronics materials such as semiconductors and hard disks all the way to metal working. Contact angles are also used to derive surface energy, and find application in evaluating surface treatments such as corona and plasma processing. Finally, contact angles are used to derive adhesion and wettability parameters, for both absorbing and non-absorbing materials.

 

Surface Tension

Surface and interfacial tensions of fluids can be measured directly from drop shape. Surface tension will change in the presence of surfactants, and surfactant characteristics can be derived from these changes.

 

Absorption

Measurements can either be static, implying a sense of equilibrium, or dynamic, where they vary as a function of time. In this latter case, the change in drop volume on the surface reflects absorption.

 

Small Drop Dispense

FTA offers specialized equipment to dispense small volumes of liquids. Workstations are available for academic use and for technology evaluation. Dispense heads are available for OEM inclusion into other systems. These heads include a modern software interface that allows the driver to be included into the user's preferred programming language.

 

Facility

First Ten Angstroms, Inc. 
39899 Balentine Drive

Suite 200
Newark, CA 94560

Tel: 757.393.1584 
Fax: 757.393.3708 

 

Founder

Dr. Roger Woodward