EDXTOOLS — Computer Programmes for the Determination of Critical EDX Spectrometer Parameters

Abstract.

 Quality assurance according to ISO or EN norms entails a periodical check of critical instrumental parameters. Not yet all commercial software purchased with instruments supports the related measurements and their fast evaluation. EDXTOOLS consist of a programme library which complements the existing software for electron excited energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) in this respect. EDXTOOLS can be used to check the detection efficiency by the evaluation of the L/K intensity ratio in a copper or nickel spectrum or by the calculation of the thickness of absorbing detector layers from experiments, which can be performed on any scanning electron microscope. Moreover, measured spectra can be modified by the transmission curve of absorbing media to estimate their influence on the result of quantitative analysis. EDXTOOLS allow the determination of the signal to background ratio from an Fe-55 spectrum and the fitting of measured FWHM’s of K-lines to find the resolution curve $\Delta{E}=\sqrt{\Delta{E_{\text{el}}^2}+{\Delta{E_{\text{det}}^2}}}$. They are completed by the possibility of calculating EDX spectra for the K-lines of light elements and to compare the resulting spectra for different formulae, physical data tables, and detector parameters chosen for the calculation. EDXTOOLS are written in MATLAB®, a wide spread interpreter language. This has the advantage that the programmes are readable text files. A user can check each computational step and modify it. The installation of MATLAB® and its optimization toolbox is necessary to work with EDXTOOLS.