Fundamental Parameter Method for Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence and its Application to Stainless Steels as First Principles Calculation

Abstract

Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) spectrometer was built in the laboratory with low wattage X-ray tube and silicon drift detector using a 3D printer. SUS 304 and 316L stainless steels were measured by the ED-XRF spectrometer and a sequential type inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES). The results of quantitative analysis obtained by the fundamental parameter (FP) program developed by the authors were compared with the ICP-AES results, and concluded the following three points.

(1) The FP method is a first principles method to theoretically calculate the concentration of elements using XRF. The accuracy and precision are satisfactory but inferior to the calibration curve method.

(2) The representative accuracy and precision in SUS 304 quantification are expressed as 18.3±0.08% for Cr and 18.1±0.01% for Ni. These values are comparable to the accuracy and precision of ED-XRF. Therefore the FP method is suitable for the ED-XRF analysis; the calibration curve method (d_j method) is highly precise and accurate, and thus suitable for wavelength dispersive (WD) XRF method.

(3) Though it is said that the FP databases should be improved in order to increase the accuracy, the FP database improvements have not been effective.