Going Nondispersive

Abstract

The energy-dispersive Si(Li) X-ray spectrometer, introduced 30 years ago into electron probe mi-croanalysis (EPMA) by R. Fitzgerald et al., has profoundly affected the development of microanalysis. It offers many advantages over the wavelength-dispersive crystal spectrometer. It has no moving parts and covers the full energy range of interest in EPMA. There is no defocusing over large distances on the specimen, the efficiency of the device is high, varies slowly and continuously with atomic number, and can be predicted fairly accurately, and, most importantly, all emission lines are detected and can be observed simultaneously. The one remaining disadvantage of the Si(Li) spectrometer is its poorer energy resolution. Solid-state detection devices now under development promise to achieve resolution comparable to that of the crystal spectrometer.