Developing Software Management for a Sample Preparation Tool

Benefits for the customer and end-users:

• Seamless Hardware Integration.
• Future-Proof Design.
• User-Friendly Deployment.
• Enhanced Efficiency.
• Cost Optimization.

Request

We were approached by a customer with a request to develop software for a hardware prototype tool used in sample preparation. They already had a clearly defined technological process of the sputter coating, which was primarily controlled through a computer connected to a microscope.

Sputter coating is a technique of sample preparation. When a metallic target material is bombarded with heavy particles, the erosion of this material happens. Sputtering occurs when the erosion process takes place in conditions of glow discharge between an anode and a cathode. In this way, and by careful selection of the ionization gas and the target material, an additional thin layer (~ 10nm) of a conductive material, such as gold, silver, platinum or palladium will coat the sample.

Software was needed to provide control and monitoring capabilities to facilitate the operation of the hardware that executed this technological process. Additionally, the customer wanted the application to be easy to install and maintain.

Challenge

When working with hardware there is always a challenge to ensure smooth communication between the software and the hardware. Even though the customer had excellent communication protocols in place for the microscope, the software also needed to communicate with additional hardware. As a cost saving the additional hardware was not custom build, but general-purpose hardware was used. Thus, a communication interface for this additional hardware had to be created from scratch. Moreover, the solution was designed to be future-proof, meaning it needed to work seamlessly both as a desktop application and as a web application, thus giving the solution a broader range of use.

Solution

We adopted a client-server structure for the application to enable both desktop and web compatibility. The client-side was built using Angular and wrapped in the Electron framework, ensuring the web application could perform as efficiently as a native desktop app. The communication between software and hardware was straightforward for the microscope. But because we could influence the selection of the general-purpose device, we selected hardware that supported .NET platform, and the code was written in C#. This allowed us to integrate the control logic directly into the server-side application and keep it easy to maintain.

Additionally, we developed an installation package that streamlined the deployment process for the end-users. Throughout the project, we employed our internal CI/CD Gitlab system for continuous integration, issue tracking, testing, and overall project management. This ensured that the development process was smooth, and the final product was reliable and robust.