Measurement of “Chemical Shift” by an Automated Commercial X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer

Abstract

The measurement of “chemical shift,” that is, the change in energy of an element's x-ray emission lines with the state of its chemical combination, has been carried out for some years. Of the three major aspects of the technique, two have received major attention. Nagel (1) has an excellent treatise on the interpretation of valence band x-ray spectra, while such workers as Fischer (2) and Koffman and Moll (3) have attempted to correlate the data with structure. The third area, convenient data collection, has not been so well investigated. Much, but not all, of the effort has been toward direct electron excitation with its attendant problems of sample damage due to high vacuum and electron bombardment effects.