PIXE microprobe analysis
Charged particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE): applications

From a technical point of view, one of the main advances of the last twenty years has been the emergence of particle microbeams. Methods for focusing ion beams of a few MeV have been developed, enabling the PIXE method to be implemented on a microscopic scale. By scanning the sample, it is then possible to obtain a point-by-point analysis and thus an elemental chemical map with a spatial resolution of the order of 300 nm for the most powerful probes (see figure 12 ).

In addition to fluorescence techniques, these microprobes can also be used for more...