Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2020-11-02
Buyer: Aarhus Universitet
Country: DK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 33000000 | 38000000
Estimated value: 630000 DKK
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: Aarhus University wishes to buy a FTIR microscope that can operate inside a glovebox for studying mechanically exfoliated 2D materials. The aim of the research is to prepare hybrid systems of vertically stacked layers and explore their stability towards exposure to various gasses under controlled environment.
2D materials and their heterostructures have demonstrated potential for a wide variety of applications in the field of sensors, optoelectronics, thermoelectrics, flexible and printed electronics, to name a few. However, most of the current research development is still limited to laboratory-level experiments on mechanically exfoliated flakes with spatial dimensions of the order of few tens of micrometers (m). The ability to perform chemical analysis, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) on the microscopic scale is crucial for the understanding and application of these materials, giving us information about e.g. the quality of interfaces and how contaminants affect expected interlayer interactions. To avoid any unexpected contamination of the samples, the spectroscopic characterization will be performed inside a glovebox under the well-controlled environment.
The Bruker is the only commercial supplier on the market at the moment that can deliver a compact standalone FTIR microscope operating in the glovebox with the sufficiently high lateral resolution, but also fulfilling all critical parameters listed below:
2) The instrument must be a stand-alone FTIR microscope with an integrated FTIR spectrometer. No FTIR microscope coupled to an external FTIR spectrometer will be accepted, due to size limitation. The footprint of the FTIR Microscope should be very compact.
3) As the system will be placed in a glovebox with either Ar or N2 atmosphere. Safety regulations forbid any system containing HeNe-lasers.
4) The FTIR microscope must be fully motorized for an easy performance inside the glovebox. In detail, that would be the following:
6) The FTIR microscope must be upgradable to be used with the second detector detector that allows true imaging, meaning that all pixels of an IR image are acquired simultaneously. Any line array is not acceptable.
7) The microscope must be able to perform fast imaging measurements with a speed of at least 500 spectra/second and still maintain the full pixel resolution of 1.25 μm in ATR mode as well as a spectral resolution of at least 4 cm-1.
8) The objective of the FTIR microscope should include a motorized ATR crystal to accomplish fully automated measurements in ATR mode. Any slide-on ATR approach is not acceptable
9) The working distance of the objective must be higher than 25 mm. Samples with a thickness of at least 35 mm should be measurable with the FTIR microscope without the need to adapt the hardware.
10) Each measurement channel of the microscope must individually be calibrated to guarantee highest wavenumber accuracy. For the imaging detectors each detector pixel must be individually calibrated to guarantee consistent wavenumber accuracy of the spectral data within the measured chemical image.
A few suppliers on the market offer FTIR microscope that fulfil some portion of the requirements specified above, however Bruker is the only commercial supplier that can deliver a fully motorized FTIR microscope with a small footprint and fulfilling all the necessary requirements for our research.
Following the notification, a standstill period of 10 calendar days will be held in accordance to paragraph 3 of Act No 593 of 2 June 2016 on the Danish Act on the Complaints Board for public Procurement. This implies that the contracting authority cannot sign the contract with the winning tenderer before the standstill period has expired.
In case of complaints about tenders or decisions, e.g. award of contracts covered by Section II or III in the Danish Public Procurement Act must be submitted to the Complaints Board for Public Procurement (Klagenævnet for udbud) within 45 calendar days from the day after the contractor published a notice in the Official Journal on the conclusion of a contract. At the latest concurrently with submission of an appeal to the Complaints Board for Public Procurement, the complainant must inform the contracting authority of the alleged infringement, and whether the appeal is to be referred to the board.


Winner: Bruker Nordic AB
Award value: 630000