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 If a piece of information is incorrect, a link outdated, or the presentation choppy or unclear, the user can just click "Edit Page" at the bottom and then fix the mistake.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
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?]
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)
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
Metals Spectra
Historic/Archeological Spectra
Reference Materials Spectra
Household Objects Spectra
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Resources
Videos
Articles
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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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Locked
Re: Skimming angle XRF- Experiment
Back to collimated beam and sensor.
Examining encrustation on corner of a galena crystal. |
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Am241 beam collimator
taray singh
Hi guys? Two common ways for Am241 housing is coaxial and converging plates? Here is an another way I am toying round. Using radionuclide lead pigs I manage to squeeze 4 buttons and made a pair The advantage is mainly when using small samples??where they can be placed very close to the Am beam Taray |
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Re: Skimming angle XRF- Experiment
This is the story of the blue rock.
I think this is from the Blanchard mine from a field trip there (many thanks to our hosts, the NM Rock and Mineral Club who have the patent on that mine). . It is an interesting rock full of all kinds of minerals and elements. At one end there is a heavy deposit of metallic looking material, XRFs as Pb, so probably Galena according to the book. A piece of the metallic stuff broke off as seen in the first picture. This small piece was going to be the next target tested. One method to analyze smaller samples liken this is the stick them on a small disk of card-stock cardboard with double sided tape. I must have pressed it onto the tape too hard with the tweezers, resulting of just a tiny flake breaking off and sticking to the tape. Not much more than a smudge really but shiny like metal so but the tape was ruined, so the choices were throw that away and make a new sample, or test it just for the heck of it. Someone on this group always said "test everything", so why not. Set up for skimming angle, 30kV 20uA 30 then 60 seconds. The samples is smaller than the hole in the collimator on the sensor, and the beam is only 1mm diameter, so getting things lined up was a problem. Turning the sample around backwards gave me a better idea where it was on the card, since it was a bit off center, so the beam now comes through the back and the XRF goes out the back through the tape and the card into the 1mm hole to the sensor. And the results (.mca attached).- what do you think, Galena? Geo |
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Re: Skimming angle XRF- Experiment
Mo-Re metal alloy "stamp" .002" thick.
Molybdenum-Rhenium Skimming, tried at 222kV @ 20uA then again at 15uA. Same patterns for both, the higher current just gave higher peaks. Pictures show geometry. Beam comes up from bottom shims through the 1mm gap between the sensor collimator and the target material. Linear display, 2 versions with appropriate gain to show the peaks of interest. |
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Re: Supplements exposed :filling materials of pharmaceuticals
I repeated the generic clopidogrel tablets This time I crushed??them??to make??it homogeneous and a longer count time Chose a??linear scale to make it. proportional . This time only Fe is seen? So??this generic seems ok for use. . Today¡¯s pandemic there is possibility of compromise in drug quality? Generics do tend to??have some ¡°inferiority¡± to the original??but the price is cheaper? But this does not necessarily mean they have harmful impurities? But I will careful about??cheap generics from India or China Only way to be sure of impurities is to do some home or lab test from time to time as batches may differ in quality? Somebody once said ? Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts Taray ?
? On Friday, January 29, 2021, 7:50 AM, taray singh via groups.io <sukhjez@...> wrote:
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