Integrated Electron and X-Ray Induced Microbeam XRF in the SEM

Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (ED-XRS or EDS) is a powerful and easy-to-use technique for the elemental analysis of a wide variety of materials. Most commonly, this technique is called X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), which classically uses x-ray photon sources to excite the sample. A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), of course, uses electrons as the excitation source for microbeam x-ray spectroscopy together with sample imaging using characteristic x-rays and/or secondary electrons. These two XRS techniques are used independently, although often the same sample is analysed by both, to provide complementary information. The advantages of both techniques have been reviewed several times [e.g. 1,2], SEM-EDS being more suited to imaging and microbeam quantitative compositional analysis and maps, and XRF more suited to accurate quantitative analysis, especially for trace elements, while analyzing a much larger area.