The Analysis of Particles at Low Accelerating

In recent years, there have been a series of advancements in electron beam instru-ments and x-ray detectors which may make it possible to improve significantly the quality of results from the quantitative elec-tron-probe analysis of individual parti-cles. These advances include: (1) field-emission gun electron beam instruments such as scanning electron microscopes (FEG-SEMs) that have high brightness electron guns with excellent performance at low beam energies, E0 10 keV and (2) high-resolution energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometers, like the microcalorimeter detector, that provide high-resolution (< 10 eV) parallel x-ray collection. These devices make it possible to separate low energy (< 4 keV) x-ray lines including the K lines of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and the L and M lines for elements with atomic numbers in the range of 25 to 83. In light of these advances, this paper in-vestigates the possibility of using accelerat-ing voltages 10 kV, as a method to improve the accuracy of elemental analysis for micrometer-sized particles. Key words: electron probe analysis; low voltage analysis; particle analysis; scanning electron microscopy; x-ray microanalysis