Beaglehole Instruments Profile

Wellington, New Zealand

Company Profile

Beaglehole Instruments is an award winning company specializing in phase-modulated single-beam and imaging ellipsometry. We aim to provide affordable individual solutions for research and development in thin-film and surface analysis with polarised light.

Our flexible and highly sensitive instruments are designed for environments where experimental setups are often changing and we have considerable expertise in providing solutions for new challenges to the ellipsometry technique, such as imaging and measurements from liquid surfaces.

We provide affordable individual solutions for both R&D and semiconductor manufacturing applications. Our instruments use polarized light for very rapid thin film and surface analysis.

Our location is in the city of Wellington in New Zealand, a country responsible for many world class innovations. It is a very inspiring environment!

The Beaglehole Team - March 2003

Beaglehole Instruments started in 1991 as a partnership between Professor David Beaglehole and Dr. Andy Edgar of the Physics Department of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The company was registered as Beaglehole Instruments Ltd in 1993.

The seeds to the company were sown back in 1978 when an associate at Victoria University, Professor John Lekner wished to determine the thickness of the surface of liquid argon in connection with an interest in the statistical physics of liquid surfaces.

(Click on the image for an enlargement)

Phase-modulated ellipsometry, originally introduced by Jasperson and Schnatterley in 1969, turned out to be the ideal technique for the job and is the underlying principal refined in the latest Beaglehole Picometer and other Ellipsometers.

Ellipsometers have been sold for use in a variety of fields including material and biological research, standards measurement, industrial manufacturing development, and surface adsorption studies. Recent sales have been made to institutions such as: Unilever Research US (for surface etching); Wyle Research, US Air Force (layer structure); International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Paris (contamination of the standard mass); Columbia University, New York (materials science); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (adsorption of gases); Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara (adsorption of polymers); University of South Australia (surface wetting); Oxford University (time dependent adsorption); Cierra Photonics (Opto-electronics layer deposition); Oxford University (materials science); Australian National University (materials science); Wheaton College (polymer research); Industrial Research Ltd., New Zealand (mass standard); California State University (biological screening).

The Beaglehole development team are all from research backgrounds and are continually working on many projects, from adsorption of proteins onto gold surfaces to the transmission of light through Antarctic snow. The electronics systems are manufactured to ISO-9001 certification and the mechanics and optical instrumentation produced by precision specialists.

Our experienced staff are available to assist in designing custom systems for semiconductor OEM and non-standard applications and advise on data analysis. Do not hesitate to contact us - see the contact page for details.