Background

Semi-quantitative analysis by the Fundamental Parameter (FP) method is a unique and powerful method for elemental screening of materials. In the FP calculation, the program requires principally the information of all elements included in a specimen for analysis. This requirement is not convenient when the specimen contains large amount of ultra-light elements from hydrogen to oxygen, which are difficult to determine accurately or non-measureable elements on X-ray spectrometry. In 2005, Rigaku developed a new method to estimate an average atomic number for non-measured elements from hydrogen to oxygen in a specimen using the intensities of scattered X-rays and applied the estimation to the semi-quantitative FP calculation (SQX) as a balance component. The successfully advanced SQX method using scattering intensities, the SQX Scatter FP method becomes available for oxide powders on the newly developed benchtop XRF spectrometer, Supermini200.