CHECK OF THE PERFORMANCE OF EDS SYSTEMS ATTACHED TO THE SEM WITH THE TEST MATERIAL EDS-TM001/002 AND EVALUATION SOFTWARE EDS SPECTROMETER TEST - APPLICATION, EXPERIENCES AND UPDATES

摘要

The test material EDS-TM001 together with an accompanying software package, "EDX spectrometer check", have been made available in 2009 by BAM [1, 2] to be employed by EDS (energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer) users to check the performance of an EDS attached to the SEM. Particularly for test laboratories operating under accreditation schemes like ISO/IEC 17025, a periodical control of the critical instrumental parameters in end-user laboratories is required. With EDS-TM001 or EDS-TM002 (second generation) test material, this periodical check is simplified to the acquisition of only one 10 kV spectrum. The software "EDX spectrometer check" is destined to evaluate automatically this spectrum and determine the performance of the EDS in terms of energy resolution and calibration, as well as possible alteration of low-energy efficiency due to detector contamination. Energy resolution can be compared with the specified values according to the international ISO standard ISO 15632:2012 [3]. EDS-TM is a synthetic material consisting of a 6 μm thick layer of C, Al, Mn, Cu and Zr deposited on a steel (in case of EDS-TM001) or silicon (in case of EDS-TM002) substrate. The chemical composition of EDS-TM was chosen such as to give nearly equal intensities of the low energy lines in a 10 kV spectrum [4], thus, making it very sensitive against spectrometer efficiency changes. Meanwhile, more than one hundred laboratories use the EDS-TM001 or EDS-TM002 test material for the periodical check of their EDS. A detailed description of the test material and software together with examples of application was published recently [4]. New results and gained experiences will be presented as well.