New investment in manufacturing technology set to improve quality of photoionisation detection (PID) sensors for VOC monitoring

Having celebrated the recent construction of their purpose-built £4.5 million facility, ION Science are continuing to make further significant investments into building the new ION Technology Centre. The sustainable, environmentally focused facility reflects ION’s vision of protecting lives and preserving the environment, whilst consolidating their position as one of the leading specialists in the field of gas sensing technology. This latest expansion will allow ION Science to further optimise and automate critical processes in their manufacturing process. 

Duncan Johns, ION Science’s Managing Director, commenting on the recent investment, said: “This will enable us to fulfil our commitment to enhance the repeatability and stability of our products; quality measures for which our sensors are already world-renowned. We strongly believe that the freedom to focus on quality and standards allows us to offer the world’s best PID sensors, and with the largest global market share, it would appear that our customers agree.” 

ION Science pride themselves on offering the widest range of PIDs in the world, the only fail-safe PIDs on the market; unsurpassed temperature and humidity stability and the most sensitive PIDs on the market. ION Science can assert that it offers the world’s widest range of PIDs largely because they do not adopt a ‘one-lamp-fits-all’ policy; ION designs, develops and manufactures 10.0, 10.6 and 11.7 eV lamps. For OEMs this is crucial as their measurement capabilities are therefore not restricted solely to compounds with ionisation energy below 10.6 eV, for example. ION Science’s customers can pick the lamps most suited to their applications, thus enhancing sensitivity, precision and extending the range of VOCs they can measure.

ION’s PIDs (MiniPIDs) feature a unique ASIC chip to monitor lamp and sensor performance continuously and provide complete assurance of sensor health. The ASIC also manages the sensor, providing excellent temperature stability to deliver a stable signal in temperatures ranging from -40 to +65 oC. PID manufacturers have always needed to overcome humidity; ION Science’s MiniPIDs have a patent protected design featuring a third electrode solve this problem and deliver a stable signal from 0 – 99% RH. ION offer MiniPIDs with ten times the sensitivity of other PID manufacturers. Sensitivity is a critical consideration when choosing a detector for monitoring trace levels of VOC’s. In addition, the MiniPID lamps and stacks are completely serviceable onsite, which reduces lifetime cost considerably. which also benefits end-users.

OEM customers often need dependable integration support, certainly at the start of the partnership – so ION Science have focused much of their energy to ensure that they provide the best service possible, especially in the early days of their partnership. Customers are surveyed to check that ION is meeting and exceeding expectations and to discover how they can improve the service they provide further..

Duncan Johns summerised: “As a private company, our independence means that we are free to continuously invest in our market-leading technologies. When OEMs integrate a PID Sensor in their products, it is their brand reputation that is at stake, so ION’s customers benefit from the assurance that every MiniPID provides high quality, reliable results.”