Microchemical Analysis of thin Metal Foils

Abstract

Several techniques have been developed for quantitative x-ray microanalysis of thin metal foils. These techniques usually provide relative elemental concentrations, and assume that for a “thin” homogeneous alloy of elements A and B, the ratio of intensity (I) of any two characteristic x-ray peaks (e.g.IAKα/IBKα) should be independent of specimen thickness. Recently, Fraser et al., conducted experiments using a highly ordered alloy (β-NiAl) to investigate this assumption, and indeed showed that in electron transparent regions of the foils there was a marked variation in the ratio of the Ka peaks of Ni and Al, respectively. The results given by Fraser et al., are summarized in Fig. 1.