Trends in X-ray Microanalysis: Enabling Rapid Discovery One Pixel at a Time

X-ray microanalysis has the potential to extend beyond high resolution element mapping of the obvious and not-so-obvious. The real power of X-ray microanalysis is the speed and accuracy with which it can enable true discovery – uncovering the unexpected chemical phase(s) that element-based image analysis alone cannot detect given the limitations of distilling massive amounts of spectral data into meaningful chemical composition. Such limitations prevail despite larger, higher resolution detectors and faster data capture, which provide even more data, again, without a means of extracting meaningful chemical composition. A solution, which was developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico, couples elemental analysis with multivariate statistical analysis to enable true discovery. When all the data is effectively leveraged – spectral, spatial, elemental, numeric – one can draw more confident conclusions than with elemental mapping alone. This paper will explore more conclusive inferences that can be made from samples ranging from simple to complex by conducting spectrum-focused analysis on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This can lead to rapid discovery of elemental phases that are not revealed by elemental mapping alone. The Thermo Scientific X-ray Microanalysis version of multivariate statistical analysis is known as COMPASS, and is available for the NORAN System 7 microanalysis system and its EDS and WDS detectors.