Cameca
CAMECA manufactures a range of scientific instruments to measure and image the elemental composition (ex: Copper, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Silicon) and/or isotopical composition (ex: 235U/ 238U in Uranium) of micro- or nano-volumes at the surface of any solid objects.
Instead of using visible light (photons) as in classical optical microscopes, the CAMECA instruments use electrons, ions or X-rays.
The fields of application are very diverse and include Earth & Planetary Sciences, Materials and Nuclear Sciences, Semiconductors, Environment, Biology and Pharmacology. The working environment ranges from pure research to automated in-line process control.
The analysis can be extremely sensitive: atomic concentration measured down to the ppb level (one detected atom among one billion surrounding atoms). The analysis is very localized: from a few cubic micrometers down to the volume of single atoms, depending on the selected technique!