CHECK AND SPECIFICATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF EDS SPECTROMETERS ATTACHED TO THE SEM - A NEW TEST MATERIAL AND AN UPDATED SOFTWARE PACKAGE

摘要

Four years ago BAM has made available via its webshop (www.webshop.bam.de) a test material, EDS-TM001, as well as a software package, "EDX spectrometer check", to be employed by both EDS users and manufacturers to check and specify, respectively, the performance of an EDS. The synthetic material consisting in a thick hard coating of C, Al, Mn, Cu and Zr, deposited on a steel substrate and the software package developed especially in connection with the test material enable not only quick procedures for the EDS (periodical) characterisation but are also in line with the international standard ISO 15632 "Microbeam Analysis - Selected instrumental performance parameters for the specification and checking of energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometers for use in electron probe microanalysis ". Hence, the spectrometer energy resolution (at the C-K, Mn-Kα, but also Mn-Lα, Cu-Lα, Al-K and Zr-Lα line energies), the calibration state of energy scale, and the Mn-Lα/Mn-Kα intensity ratio (as a measure for the instrumental detection efficiency) are automatically calculated by the software from only one 10 kV spectrum of the EDS-TM001.