Foreign Particle Analysis - Modern AI-Driven Solutions

Foreign particle analysis (or contamination analysis) is a crucial part of any manufacturing process – from polymers to batteries. This analysis plays an important role in understanding the composition, origin, and potential impact of contaminants in various materials. This analysis has historically been performed using the human brain and eyes (the world's most powerful computer and camera combination). However, the classical manual techniques simply do not meet the ever-evolving safety and quality regulations, as well as the industrial requirements for throughput in the modern age of manufacturing. The current industry requirements dictate the need for foreign particle analysis to be performed at high speeds, along with contamination characterization, classification, and sorting. This lecture goes into modern methods for performing this analysis, the challenges that current optical and illumination technology can create, how artificial intelligence is used to overcome these challenges, and the future potential for this type of technology.