ITT for the Provision of an FTIR Microscope with Focal Play Array

The marine litter team at Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory has a requirement for a FTIR microscopy system that supports several automatised steps for an effective and highly quantitative workflow with full characterisation of plastic of small particle sizes down to below 10 m in size, but also suited for larger particles up to a few mm in size. The system must be equipped with an 128x128 focal plane array detector. An automatic motorised stage including z-stepper, practical data handling and storage allowing data acquisition over a 47 mm diameter filter are necessary. The main objective is the quantification and characterisation of all microplastic particles on filters extracted from environmental samples (sediment, biota and water samples), with high throughput. Time-efficiency in the data acquisition, while maintaining resolution, is a essential.