Knowing what something is made from is the foundation of understanding of what something is. It can indicate its intended purpose and tell you if it has been made from the correct material, and whether it has been changed in some way such as becoming contaminated or corroded over time. This is important for many types of investigation in fields as diverse as forensic science, failure analysis and quality assurance, material science and archaeology.
Our laboratories in Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire are well equipped to address these sorts of problems by considering the structure and chemical composition of an object over a range of scales. The materials we have examined include metal alloys, semiconductors, glasses, ceramics, bone, teeth, and explosives.
