| Abstract: |
In recent years, there have been a series of advancements in electron beam instruments and x-ray detectors which may make it possible to improve significantly the quality of results from the quantitative electron-probe analysis of individual particles. These advances include: (1) field-emission gun electron beam instruments such as scanning electron microscopes, FEG-SEMs, that have high brightness electron guns with excellent performance at low beam energies, EO less than or equal to 10 keV. (2) High-resolution energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometers, like the microcalorimeter detector, that provide high-resolution, less than 10eV, parallel x-ray collection. These devices make it possible to separate low energy less than or equal to 4 keV x-ray lines including the K lines of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and the L and M lines for elements with atomic numbers in the range of 25-83. In light of these advances, this paper investigates the possibliity of using accelerating voltages less than or equal to 10 kV, as a method to improve the accuracy of elemental analysis for micrometer-sized particles. |
