A procedure using polychromatic excitation and scattered radiation for matrix correction in x‐ray microfluorescence analysis

Abstract

A fundamental-parameters method using x-ray tube excitation was developed for use in the x-ray microfluorescence analysis of flat, optically polished geological specimens. In this procedure, the coherent and incoherent tube target lines scattered from the sample are used to calculate the average atomic number and mass thickness of the sample. The polychromatic tube spectral distribution is calculated from a published algorithm. Since elements such as carbon, bydrogen and oxygen are unmeasurable, their contribution for the purposes of matrix correction can be represented by two hypothetical elements which span each side of the calculated average atomic number of the low-Z matrix. This procedure is applicable to infinitely thick samples and also those of intermediate thickness, and was tested on glasses of known composition.

Research in quantitative microscopic X-ray fluorescence analysis

“…The errors in the current analysis are greater than the errors reported in Ref. [1]. These results indicate that the shape of the spectrum of primary X-ray microbeams significantly influences the accuracy of the XRF analysis with the use of fundamental parameter approach.…”

“…These results confirmed satisfactory homogeneity of the standard samples. The results presented in Table 1 were used to calculate the calibration constants G i [1] for the XRF calibration. In the calculations, a primary spectral tube distribution computed from an algorithm presented in Ref.…”

“…These characteristics of A-XRF offer a capability for application in nondestructive simultaneous multi-elemental analysis of small areas of geological, environmental and organic samples. In 1995, Lankosz and Pella [1] published work describing a computer program for quantitative analysis of polished glass samples by A-XRF technique. This fundamental parameters program was novel in that it used a calculated tube spectrum to allow the use of polychromatic radiation in combination with coherent and incoherent scatter lines of tube targets for estimation of the mass thickness of the sample and its effective atomic number.…”

Quantitative X-ray fluorescence analysis of samples of less than ‘infinite thickness’: Difficulties and possibilities

“…FP methods using scattered primary radiation for simultaneous determination of the sample thickness and composition are also used in µ-XRF spectrometry [64]. The proposed algorithm previously used for the analysis of geological materials using polychromatic excitation was next adopted for biological and environmental materials (oyster tissue, spinach leaves, bovine liver, urban particulate matter) analyzed using a Mo pinhole collimator producing a spot size of about 250 µm [65] and conical capillary X-ray optics having 300 µm diameter [14].…”

Quantitative elemental analysis of individual particles with the use of micro‐beam X‐ray fluorescence method and Monte Carlo simulation

“…[10] The samples of NIST K3089 material were under examination by former workers. [2] They have announced that the relative standard deviation of elemental concentrations changes from 0.35 (for Si) to 1.51% (for Pb); hence NIST K3089 material samples can be treated as homogeneous. Some modern methods of particle homogeneity testing [11] were published recently.…”