XRF Wiki

Welcome to the XRF Wiki. This Wiki is a repository of information contributed by members of [email protected]. Members can view and edit the pages. The pages are currently not viewable by the public. The pages below represent a rough overview of the technology and techniques associated with X-Ray Florescence Spectroscopy as well as serving as a place for members to organize the spectra that they have contributed to the forum.?

As a starting point, the pages will be populated by information taken from member posts from the past few years - with references/attribution. Perhaps in time, these pages can be edited by members to make them more complete and less choppy. Members can also edit this page, making the structure of the content more organized.?

Pages can contain information about a particular topic, links to relevant resources (such as manuals, research papers, etc.), links to relevant forum discussions on the topic, book titles, or anything that might be useful.

What follows is very much a work in progress.

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Adding to the Wiki

For those unfamiliar with the Wiki phenomenon, it is basically a user editable encyclopedia. The idea is that there are pages with different articles, which the user can read and also choose to edit if desired. If a piece of information is incorrect, a link outdated, or the presentation choppy or unclear, the user can just click "Edit Page" at the bottom and then fix the mistake. There is also a "Page History," so if you a user were to make a mistake or maliciously destroy a page (which wouldn't happen here) an editor can come along and restore the page to a previous version.?

If you have used MediaWiki (the engine that runs behind the scene of Wikipedia.org) you will be familiar with a certain style of creating an article. There are tags that one uses to change the formatting of the parts of the article. The Wiki on Groups.io uses a different background engine and so the standard MediaWiki syntax does not apply here. Rather, the page is edited using the same tools as one would use to compose a message on the forums. If you are a programmer or someone who likes using the tagged syntax directly, you can access the underlying page source code, be activating the advanced editing toolbar (the icon with three lines on the far right of the basic toolbar) and then clicking on the source code icon <> on the far right of the Advance Editing Toolbar. You will immediately notice that the underlying source code is HTML. Most things can be done just by using the various icons, but advanced features like table can only be implemented by manually writing the source code. (Although there are website available that will generate the source code for you through a graphical interface.)

Here are some useful resources from Groups.io:?

Wiki Guide for Users and Editors

Message Composition Tips and Tricks

Overview of XRF

Terminology

X-Ray Florescence vs. X-Ray Diffraction

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Hardware

This section describes the hardware used for XRF. We will describe the basic theory of operation of each stage in the processing tool chain and then present different commercial systems that are available as these systems are often integrated together.

[Editor note: General theory needs to be in an independent page separate from specific manufacturer information.

[Editor note - question: Should this be arranged by category, e.g detectors, preamps, etc or by manufacturer with the manufacturers product line on one page. Perhaps it's best to put a list of products with theory but the details of the products on a manufacture page...]

Detectors?- what's available, theory of operation, tradeoffs

Detector Cooling?- keeping detectors cool to avoid thermal noise and keeping the TEC from overheating

Preamps?- theory of operation, brief summary of what out there (and what not to do - such as trying to use a PMT preamp for a SiPIN diode...)

Pulse Processing Theory - high level overview of the stages of going from detector pulse to channel peaks on the computer

Commercial Systems - many commercial systems are integrated so it seems to make sense to present, for example all Amptek products together. [question: are their other affordable integrated systems besides Amptek?]

NIM Modules

Amptek XRF System

Activation Sources - what do you use to make the sample fluoresce (that's within the amateur budget and doesn't require special licensing)

Exempt Isotopes

X-Ray Sources

Power Supplies

Hardware Schematics

Software

• Device Control Software - what do you use to collect the data from the detector system
• XRF Analysis Software - what do you use to analyze the data, especially for quantitative measurements (composition percentages, thin film measurement)
• Free Software Tools

Note: there may be software packages that possess some or all of these characteristics.

Materials Spectra

Minerals Spectra

Metals Spectra

Historic/Archeological Spectra

Reference Materials Spectra

Household Objects Spectra

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Resources

XRF Charts

Videos

Books

Articles

Websites

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Non-XRF Techniques

Gamma Spectroscopy

Raman Spectroscopy

FTIR - Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Atomic Emission Spectroscopy

Inductively Coupled Atomic Emission Spectroscopy

Spark Emission Spectroscopy

Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy

LIBS - Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Photoacoustic Spectroscopy

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