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 If a piece of information is incorrect, a link outdated, or the presentation choppy or unclear, the user can just click "Edit Page" at the bottom and then fix the mistake.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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Geo'e different GROUPS.io Groups for different topics.
When we changed over from Yahoo Groups to Groups.io Groups? some changes were made. To avoid 75,000 unrelated posts again, the subject matter was divided up into specialty groups?to allow us to
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GEOelectronics@...
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#1809
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Nick, once again I have to say that it would be awesome if we lived closer together. ;) The overlap in our stashes of goodies, and thus interests, is significant. -Dave
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Dave McGuire
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#1808
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
No rings, necklaces, long sleeves, gloves, or loose clothing near the machines. That's a pretty bad one. He'd probably done that a thousand times before.
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Nick Andrews
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#1807
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
I have several more of those ancient rack units, Scientific Atlanta stuff from an old satellite tracking station that was at NMSU/PSL. Among other things. Hard to believe, I know...
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Nick Andrews
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#1806
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Soren, Thanks for the links The Open Raman is the best technical DIY one I¡¯ve been following but he uses rather expensive open beam Thorlabs parts ($3,000) where I want to use fiber.
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Dude
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#1805
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Dud, RE: Raman spectroscopy - Certainly, I'll post something in it's own thread when I get everything working. In the meantime, here are a few things I've found: * Typically Raman and cheap do not go
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Soren
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#1804
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
That worked - Thanks Dud Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 6:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [XRF] Welcome new member Justin. I don¡¯t think it will work for me to include the video as an
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Dude
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#1803
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Re: Amptek SiPIN vs FastSDD - Recommendations?
Hi Michael. Welcome!The "Topics" are groupings of messages on a single topic. Yes the first posts were about the jargon we use and definitions etc.Geo
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GEOelectronics@...
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#1802
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
I don¡¯t think it will work for me to include the video as an attachment, but I¡¯ll give it a try¡ Ken Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 05:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [XRF] Welcome new
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Ken Sejkora
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#1801
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
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GEOelectronics@...
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#1800
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Re: Amptek SiPIN vs FastSDD - Recommendations?
Hi George, I recently joined the group, so sorry if I am being a bit dense here. I am having trouble finding "the first message on this board" I have read through some initial posts circa 2018 post#1
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Michael Sears
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#1799
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Re: Amptek SiPIN vs FastSDD - Recommendations?
Hi Soren Welcome to this group Here is file comparing xrf detectors With fine tuning of Si Pin with long count rates,gains ,peaking time ,geometry and proper sampling techniques one can go beyond some
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taray singh <sukhjez@...>
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#1798
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Re: Trinitite
Hi Scott. Maybe sometime you can share a few pictures of the reds here, top and bottom. The big green one I've been working with - on the bottom instead of sand is a bed of tektites consisting of many
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GEOelectronics@...
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#1797
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Hi Did and others. I'll try to find a public link to the video. I tried to dissect the html source of the Facebook link to the video, but didn't have any success. I'll keep trying to find a public
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Ken Sejkora
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#1796
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Re: Trinitite
Hello Geo, Nice find... I have quite a few many outstanding specimens of Red...some highly magnetic "like fly off the table when magnet comes near"
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SCOTT CAMPBELL
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#1795
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Soren, Keep us up to date on your progress on Raman spectroscopy, a couple of us here are interested in getting a DIY system running for mineral ID¡.cheaply Dud KK7IF Sent: Thursday, December 3,
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Dude
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#1794
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Link didn't work for me either. Somewhere, I have a picture from eastern Europe where a fellow got pulled into a large lathe turning what looks like a 12" diameter object. You can identify one of the
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Nick Andrews
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#1793
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Ken, I¡¯m not on Face book and can¡¯t log in. Can you post a public link. Dud Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 1:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [XRF] Welcome new member Justin. Greetings to
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Dude
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#1792
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Big fun part of an old spectrometer. I dismantled two of them. One was this vacuum tube for the rf generator, the other is solid state. The main power supplies are crazy heavy.
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Nick Andrews
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#1791
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Re: Welcome new member Justin.
Mmm, some very nice older microwave hardware there! -Dave
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Dave McGuire
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#1790
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