Residual Gas Analysis
Usually referred to as RGA, Residual Gas Analysis involves performing a 'qualitative' measurement of residual gases within a vacuum system. This allows the 'quality' of the vacuum to be determined for optimum system performance and to determine if it is 'safe' to carry out a process of some kind within the vacuum.
Vacuum diagnostics of this kind offer a major step up from mere Helium leak testing. For component testing this may be more than adequate, but if you are process orientated it is vital to be able to detect other problems beyond that of an air leak.
There may simply be extremely high water levels which could account for pump-down difficulties (you can leak test with He forever and never find this!), or you may have high levels of oil in the system affecting the quality and yield of a product. You may have an internal leak, say the seat of a valve which controls a process blanket gas. These, and many more scenarios, are all manageable if you can determine them in the first place. There are characteristic spectra that are observed for these conditions and an RGA can qualitatively provide this information quickly.
The Odyssey provides invaluable RGA capability and the POLARIS Leak Detection System combines full Leak Detector capability with RGA in the world's first UHV diagnostic tool.
