A fundamental parameter method for measurement of the thickness of pure element films by an EDX technique with a proportional detector

Abstract

I'o\ oliii4i i 1 1 nivc'rsit y of Tec hilology . Tovohiahi 44 ). Japiin Application of the fundamental parameter method to the detenniaation of & I thickness by an EDX technique with a proportional detector was performed by considering that x-rays striking the detector were composed of the following kinds: (1) the analyte l i e of the film excited directly by the primary beam, (2) the analyte line of the film excited secondarily by scattered or characteristic x-rays from the substrate and (3) scattered and characteristic x-rays from the substrate which passed through the film to be analysed. The intensity of all these types were considered theoretically, and the film thickness was evaluated by Gtting the theoretical intensity of the x-rays striking the detector to the experimental intensity, by use of an iteration process. In addition, the accuracy of the theoretical values of intensities excited secondarily was veri6ed by comparison with the experimental values.

X-ray spectrometry

“…The required X-ray tube spectral distributions either were experimentally measured distributions from the literature or were calculated from an algorithm developed for seven commonly used X-ray tubes at any voltage (190). The fundamental parameter method has been applied by a number of authors for the evaluation of interelement coefficients (191) and for the measurement of film thicknesses (192).…”