As Europe's longest established and one of the world's first producers of Aluminium reference material, Suisse Technology Partners Ltd (former Alusuisse) can look back on a long tradition of spectrometric analysis of Aluminium and it's alloys. Very early, STP has started the production of Reference Materials for analysis and has been known for years as one of the world's leading and worldwide accepted suppliers for these products. By continually adjusting the composition and improving the quality of it's products, STP responds to the changing requirements of the customers.
The Reference Materials in this catalogue for analysis of Aluminium and it's alloys are manufactured in Europe, and thoroughly tested for homogeneity and analysed from the Suisse Technology Partners at Neuhausen (Switzerland). In production, single or multiple strand continuous casting techniques out of one single melt are applied. This allows production of large casts with narrow tolerances in composition and excellent homogeneity. For highly alloyed AlSi and AlFe Reference Materials, special techniques are applied.
Homogeneity testing is performed by means of spark emission spectrometry. Tests include multiple measurements on individual samples on various levels of all rods of the whole cast. The standard deviation resulting from all measurements reduced by those eliminated together with their respective material as outlayers expressed as % of the element concentration is used as the measure for the homogeneity of these elements. Depending on the concentration of the element, these relative standard deviations are typically found to be between 0.3 - 1 % for alloying and other elements and around 0.5 - 5 % for trace elements.
The analyses are based on latest or internationally accepted analytical procedures. Some of them were developed by the Aluminium section of GDMB (Gesellschaft für Bergbau Metallurgie, Rohstoff- und Umwelttechnik e.V.). These procedures are trace-able to pure substances. Suisse Technology Partners AG is a participating member in such bodies as GDMB and on the European level the CEN and significantly contributes to the development of standardised analytical procedures. STP certified values are evaluated against the certified values of commercially available CRM in the course of their production, if a comparable sample is available, thereby complying with the International Standard ISO 17025.