CRAIC Technologies quartz slides, quartz wellslides and quartz coverslips are spectral grade and manufactured to the highest levels of quality.

Quartz slides and quartz coverslips are commonly used in UV-visible microspectroscopy and microscopy.  This is because common glass slides and coverslips absorb UV light resulting in very little transmission below 340 nm.  Quartz, on the other hand, transmits UV light with much greater efficiencies.

However, all quartz is not equal.  As with anything, there are various grades and specifications.  The most common quartz slides and coverslips use lower grade materials as they are not designed for deep UV microspectroscopy or microscopy.  However, a spectroscopist needs all the UV light they can get... especially in the deep ultraviolet region where many materials exhibit some very unique features.

To the left is the transmittance spectra of CRAIC spectral grade quartz and quartz commonly used in microscope slides and coverslips.  The purple line represents the type of quartz that is most commonly used to manufacture quartz slides and quartz coverslips.  As is obvious, there is a dramatic drop in UV transmission of this material below 265 nm.  This is one of the reasons so many scientists have difficulty with UV microspectroscopy between 200 to 265 nm when not using CRAIC quartz slides. The red line represents the optical grade quartz used by CRAIC Technologies in their quartz slides and quartz coverslips.  The amount of UV transmitted is over 85% down to 200 nm.