EDX / EDS

By
Riyadh, Bimansyah and Kahfi
What is EDX..?
Energy Dispersive X-ray / Spectroscopy (EDX or EDS) is ..

an analytical technique used for the elemental analysis or chemical

characterization of a sample.
How it works..?
 Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy is based on the detection of
characteristic x-rays emitted of an element as a result of the de-excitation of
core electron holes created by a high energy electron beam.
 An electron from a higher binding energy electron level falls into the core hole
and an x-ray with the energy of the difference of the electron level binding
energies is emitted.
for example..
 Imaging three-wire specimen by secondary electrons &
backscattered electrons in combination with compositional
analysis and elemental mapping using EDX.
 (magnification 60x.)
 The red rectangle in the inset image shows the selected EDX
inspection field.

 The resulting spectrum and tabulated results reveal that Al, Ti, and Ni
are the main elements present with Al being the most abundant in the
selected field.
 An EDX spectrum was collected at
each point identified in the top
secondary electron image to
individually characterize the wires.

 The resulting spectra show that the

largest diameter wire (spot 1) is Ni,
the medium diameter wire (spot 2) is
Al, and the thinnest diameter wire
(spot 3) is Ti.

 Note that a small amount of Al

smeared onto the other wire
surfaces when these wires were
wound together.
 Another important and useful capability of the EDX
technique is x-ray mapping of elements.
 Here the positions of specific elements emitting characteristic x-rays
within an inspection field can be indicated by unique color. In Figure 4
the maps of Ni, Al, and Ti are shown individually and overlaid with the
original image.

 Note that the color-coded elements align with the individual

wires. While in this example specific elements are associated with
specific wires, in more complex samples elemental mapping can be
used to great advantage to show positions of inclusions, phases with
varying composition, contaminants, etc.
 The original secondary electron image of the three twisted wires is
shown again, this time overlaid with the color-coded element maps
corresponding to the different wires shown in this field of view. The
individual element maps are also shown.
Benefit of EDX
 User friendly (stability, speed, high count rates)
 Drift corrections, for long acquisition ties (mapping)
 Automatic identification (spectrum synthesis ‘easy’
identification)
Drawbacks
 high tension beam current sample density (thickness)

 interaction volume

 count rate statistics

 detector speed energy resolution (spectral resolution)

 time efficient, without too much thinking (automated)

A different technique is WDS (Wavelength
Dispersive Xray / Spectroscopy):

 Accurate quantitative analysis below 500pppm

 Less than 10eV resolution for resolving important overlaps
like Sulfur/Molybdenum
 Easily and unambiguously determines the distribution of all
elements in a sample even where peaks overlap
 Up to 100 times more sensitive than an EDS system for trace
element detection
 Most accurate elemental analysis available for SEM
There are advantages and disadvantages
to both EDS and WDS systems.

 One of the main advantages of the EDS system is

that the user can quickly collect a full spectrum
with the push of a button.
 Using a WDS system the user must use multiple
spectrometers to get the entire periodic table, and
has to mechanically scan the spectrometers from
one limit to the other.
 However, the most significant
difference between WDS and EDS
systems is their energy resolution. A
Mn Ka X-ray line on an EDS system
will typically be between 135-150 eV
wide.
 On a WDS system, this same X-ray
line will only be about 10 eV wide.
 This means that the amount of
overlap between peaks of similar
energies is much smaller on the
WDS system.
Thank you for your attention!