JFE Techno-Research starts 3D X-ray microscope analysis service

JFE Techno-Research has established non-destructive analysis methods using the ApexHybrid-210, a 3D X-ray microscope made by Sigray of the United States, and in August 2026 began offering contract analysis with it in full. Mynavi News TECH+ reported the company's announcement on August 27. The report says JFE Techno-Research installed the instrument in January 2026, the first in Japan, and has been developing analysis methods for all-solid-state batteries and semiconductor packages.

The instrument combines two imaging modes in one unit: orthogonal CT and laminography, which images the sample from an oblique angle. With precise angle control, laminography can image large, flat samples up to 300 mm in diameter and 20 mm thick without cutting them. In orthogonal CT, a nanofocus X-ray source paired with a sensitive detector gives a spatial resolution of 0.40 µm, described as among the best in the industry.

In X-ray CT, resolution and field of view usually trade off against each other. Seeing finer detail means using a smaller sample placed closer to the detector. The two modes cover both ends of that trade. Orthogonal CT handles small samples at high resolution, and that is where the 0.40 µm figure applies. Laminography handles large, flat samples whole and gives up some resolution. Flat samples are awkward in ordinary CT, which rotates the sample, because the X-ray path along the long side gets too long. Imaging at an oblique angle avoids that limit.

The announced targets are batteries and semiconductor packages, not pharmaceuticals. Still, drug and biologic manufacturing has plenty of parts whose internal structure decides performance: the layers and porosity of tablets, the pore structure of lyophilized cakes, the moving parts and seals in autoinjectors, welds in single-use components, and the contact between glass and stopper in prefilled syringes. Cutting such samples has three drawbacks. The sample is lost, only the cut face can be seen, and embedding and polishing can move the very gaps and interfaces under study.

Few companies can justify owning such an instrument, and setting the imaging and reconstruction conditions takes experience. Used through a contract lab, a method like this would usually start as a root-cause tool in process development, with findings translated into simpler in-process checks. Making it a specification test would be a later decision.