News
23.02.2022Publication of the paper “Electron Probe Microanalysis of Transition Metals using L lines: The Effect of Self-absorption”
PhD. Xavier Llovet, head of the Electron Microprobe Laboratory at the CCiTUB has published the article entitled "Electron Probe Microanalysis of Transition Metals using L lines: The Effect of Self-absorption" in the journal Microscopy and Microanalysis.
The study, done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Wisconsin -Madison, deals with the effect of self-absorption, which affects the analysis of transition-metal compounds by electron probe microanalysis. The article is open access thanks to the recent agreement between the Universitat de Barcelona and Cambridge University Press.
The abstract of the paper is the following:
"Electron microprobe-based quantitative compositional measurement of first-row transition metals using their L X-ray lines is hampered by, among other effects, self-absorption. This effect, which occurs when a broad X-ray line is located close to a broad absorption edge, is not accounted for by matrix corrections. To assess the error due to neglecting self-absorption, we calculate the L X-ray intensity emitted from metallic Fe, Ni, Cu, and Zn targets, assuming a Lorentzian profile for the X-ray line and taking into account the energy dependence of the mass absorption coefficient near the absorption edge. We find that calculated X-ray intensities depart increasingly, for increasing electron beam energy, from those obtained assuming a narrow X-ray line and a single fixed absorption coefficient (conventional approach), with a maximum deviation of 15% for Ni and of 10% for Fe. In contrast, X-ray intensities calculated for metallic Zn and Cu do not differ significantly from those obtained using the conventional approach. The implications of these results for the analysis of transition-metal compounds by electron probe microanalysis as well as strategies to account for self-absorption effects are discussed".
The paper can be read at the follwing link:[+].