Low Energy X-ray Fluorescence


X-ray Fluorescence


When X-ray light meets and interacts with atoms of the specimen, a vast of phenomena occur. The X-ray power is high enough to efficiently remove and emit inner-shell electrons from the atoms, leading to a cascade of electron movements within the atom. One of the effects is that the atom emits secondary light (the photon effect described by Albert Einstein). The 'efficiency' for such processes called the X-ray fluorescence yield is for soft X-rays much lower than for hard X-rays, where such measurement techniques are well established.

We from TwinMic  are the first to integrate low-energy X-ray Fluorescence for light elements from phosphorus down to the boron absorption edge into our system.
A. Gianoncelli et al. Nucl. Instr. Meth. in Physics Research A608 (2009) 195–198.
R. Alberti et al., X-ray Spectrometry 38 (2009) 205-209.

Typical TwinMic XRF spectrum

TwinMic LEXRF setup


Fostered by newly developed SDD detectors and customized data acquisition electronics, we successfully implemented a compact multi-element SDD spectrometer in the soft x-ray SXM instrument and demonstrate for the first time XRF with submicron spatial resolution down to the C edge. The combination of sub-micron LEXRF with simultaneous acquisition of absorption and phase contrast images has proven to provide valuable insights into the organization of materials dominated by light element constituents. The major advantage of LEXRF compared to XANES is administered by simultaneous mapping of different elements without time-consuming refocusing of chromatic ZP-based lens setups operated in the entire range of 400 – 2200 eV photon energies. A quantitative analysis of LEXRF detection limits and comparison to XANES at such photon energies in under investigation and evaluation.

Last Updated on Monday, 26 March 2012 16:41