9523202 Wolf This research is to develop a compact wavelength dispersive spectrometer (WDS) to install inside the specimen chamber of an electron microscope. The WDS employs a crystal of known lattice spacing to separate collected x-rays by energy or wavelength. This provides higher energy-resolution of x-ray peaks, higher peak-to-background ratios, and better elemental x-ray images. Mounting the WDS units inside the microscope specimen chamber would significantly increase the x-ray collection angle and result in accurate and in-depth chemical analysis. A miniature WDS system would provide chemical analysis in situations where other spectrometer systems cannot. This development would be commercially applicable to several thousand existing standard electron microscopes, and may be extended to analytical electron microscopes in the future.
