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 If a piece of information is incorrect, a link outdated, or the presentation choppy or unclear, the user can just click "Edit Page" at the bottom and then fix the mistake.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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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Hi guys
To look at the smaller ?lower energies reduce the kV below the 15keV Zr peak.? In general keep the kV 2-3 times the energy of the peak you are looking for. U..
Couldn¡¯t agree more
If
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taray singh <sukhjez@...>
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#890
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Re: Anlyzing and comparing Trinitite samples.
Meantime I found Strontium in Trinitite with the Si-PIN and XRF- next to see if it's Sr-Y-90 type.
Sr is in blue
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GEOelectronics@...
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#889
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Edited
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Re: Si-PIN with a view
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GEOelectronics@...
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#888
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Si-PIN with a view
The scan is of ishikawaite from Little Patsy Pegmatite, South Platte, CO.
The Si-PIN is sitting on the window sill with a view of the Catalina
Foothills.
Charles
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Charles David Young
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#887
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
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GEOelectronics@...
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#874
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Geo,
Try combining the amptek La,b and La,b libraries into one. It a pain to have to switch libraries between the two.
I used to run over the weekend using a HPGe detector for those really weak
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Dude
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#873
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Good points and I'll definitely experiment with that when the equipment can go back into "experiment" mode. Right now everything is tied up taking measurements for my database with the current sensors
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GEOelectronics@...
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#872
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Geo,
To look at the smaller lower energies reduce the kV below the 15keV Zr peak. In general keep the kV 2-3 times the energy of the peak you are looking for. Use a filter that has a k-edge about
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Dude
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#871
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Here's the longer run time Dude, there is information in the smaller peaks, but the overwhelming peaks are swamping some of them. Should I try less Kv or less uA?
In the past I never noticed stable
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GEOelectronics@...
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#870
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Geo,
Looks like you¡¯ll need quite a bit more count time before you¡¯ll finally see what¡¯s there. The U/Th is most certainly fluorescing the Zr. What does the higher energy Ka¡¯s look like. You
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Dude
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#869
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Steve's 97ct Zircon excited by 40kVp X-Ray @ 15 uA (microAmps) for 4.51 seconds.
The tittle of the picture says it all.(will now look deeper for other elements)
Geo>K0FF
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GEOelectronics@...
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#868
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
,mca of 3.5 hour gamma spectrum scan of Steve D's 97ct Zircon in graded shield chamber on Si-PIN detector. Tremendous accuracy and detail, but not much going on in that range. Next up will be the
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GEOelectronics@...
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#867
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
The Q in the picture's title stands for Question Mark.
Steve's 97ct Zircon in the Si-PIN chamber. We know uranium is in it, down at the low end we expect the U daughters Pa and so on to show off
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GEOelectronics@...
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#866
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Will be glad to post those Dud, it may be a while, but definitely on the punch list for these samples.Geo
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GEOelectronics@...
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#865
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Geo,
Very nice. It would be interesting to see a Si-Pin comparison in natural source with the same count time as the TeCd to look at the differences in efficiency.
Dud
Sent: Wednesday,
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Dude
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#863
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
this is all natural, no9 excitation source used at all....that will come later.George
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GEOelectronics@...
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#862
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Re: Zircon- Malawi vs Sri Lanka
Geo,
What was your excitation source. We need to sort out XRF lines from the source excitation lines or natural lines
Dud
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2020 7:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject:
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Dude
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#861
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Re: Anlyzing and comparing Trinitite samples.
After scanning the red Trinitite for 16,500 seconds (~4.6Hr) the Cs-137 fission product has caught up in the RT sample to equal the count of the TM sample (which was scanned for 86,400Secs = 24Hrs).
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GEOelectronics@...
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#859
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Re: Anlyzing and comparing Trinitite samples.
After more time has passed, noted in the parameter bar on the right, in seconds, the next peaks coincide.
These are in the U and Np L shell peak trio at the left end, corresponding to Am-241 decay
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GEOelectronics@...
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#858
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Re: Anlyzing and comparing Trinitite samples.
Now the TM scan is ghosted as a red outline, while the RT sample in solid? yellow has been started , then stopped at the first point where a major peak height corresponds to one in TM.
First to do so
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GEOelectronics@...
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#857
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