Latest version changes for Probe for EPMA (and CalcImage) v. 14.3.6

[John Donovan]

The latest v. 14.3.6 of Probe for EPMA now includes a pdf document accessed from the Help menu, which explains our very unintuitive method for PHA tuning for high accuracy microanalysis.  Even when extrapolating from pure metals or pure oxides to alloys/sulfides or oxides/silicates, respectively.



Of course this also requires that one has properly calibrated their dead time constants (and using the logarithmic dead time equation in Probe for EPMA), because we are no longer "count rate matching" our standard to our unknown.

And of course for large atomic number extrapolations, we require the Donovan and Moy Z based backscatter correction as described here by Andrew Locock:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=40.msg13051#msg13051

See also here for many examples of ~1% or better relative accuracy in most of these "Xtreme" extrapolations:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=1831.0

All of this assumes that your WDS spectrometers are mechanically aligned, which can be chcked using the Bragg order k-ratio test:

https://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=1739.0