Standardless quantification by parameter optimization in electron probe microanalysis

S. LIMANDRI; R. BONETTO; V. GALVÁN JOSA; A. CARRERAS; J. TRINCAVELLI

SPECTROCHIMICA ACTA PART B-ATOMIC SPECTROSCOPY

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2012 p. 44 - 51

0584-8547

A method for standardless quantification by parameter optimization in electron probemicroanalysis is presented.The method consists in minimizing the quadratic differences between an experimental spectrum and an analytical function proposed to describe it, by optimizing the parameters involved in the analytical prediction. This algorithm, implemented in the software POEMA (Parameter Optimization in Electron Probe Microanalysis), allows the determination of the elemental concentrations, along with their uncertainties. The method was tested in a set of 159 elementalconstituents corresponding to 36 spectra of standards (mostly minerals) that include trace elements. The results were compared with those obtained with the commercial software GENESIS Spectrum® for standardless quantification. The quantifications performedwith themethod proposed here are better in the 74% of the cases studied.In addition, the performance of themethod proposed is comparedwith the first principles standardless analysis procedure DTSA for a different data set, which excludes trace elements. The relative deviations with respect to the nominal concentrations are lower than 0.04, 0.08 and 0.35 for the 66% of the cases for POEMA, GENESIS and DTSA, respectively.