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John M. Martinis, David A. Wollman, Kent D. Irwin, Gene C. Hilton
Abstract
A revolutionary advance in x-ray microanalysis will occur in the next few years due to the development of new x-ray spectrometers based on microcalorimeters. These detectors will be similar in operation to commonly-used energy dispersive spectrometers (EDS) but will improve upon the energy resolution by at least a factor of 10, thus rivaling or possibly exceeding the resolution achievable with wavelength dispersive spectrometers (WDS). We discuss the basic operating principle of this new technology and present microanalysis data taken with the detector on a scanning electron microscope to demonstrate the utility of the microcalorimeter spectrometer.