Identification of Surface Impurities and Particles by Means of Special Analysis Methods

A key element in the pharmaceutical industry and in medical engineering is to avoid any product contamination by foreign material such as solved impurities or particles. Particles detected during product inspection have to be identified to find and eliminate the root cause. Besides particles, surface contamination of equipment parts, packaging material or medical devices is also a common source of product contamination.

This paper describes some special analytical techniques, their advantages and disadvantages and their application for particle material identification as well as for surface contamination characterization.