A method of correcting dead time and pulse pile‐up errors in energy‐dispersive X‐ray analysis

Abstract

The Barnhart pulse pile-up and dead time correction method is used by a number of manufacturers of energydispersive x-ray analysers. This method may provide inadequate correction at moderately high count rates and/or in the presence of low-energy x-ray peaks. A correction scheme is proposed to overcome these difficulties and its effectiveness is illustrated by the analysis of several homogeneous mineral samples of well established composition.