Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) is an analytical technique used for qualitative and semi-quantitative elemental analysis.

The EDX detector is sensitive to characteristic X-rays emitted from a material specimen as a consequence of the incident electron beam interaction. This arrangement produces a live spectrum displaying the corresponding elemental composition (in weight % or atomic %) representing the depth of interaction correlated with the beam intensity. This technique can be used to perform punctual analysis, compositional mappings, line scans or Automatic Particle Analysis (APA).

It is important to highlight that standard EDX makes impossible to detect the presence of elements below around 0.2 wt% (the value dependents on the weight), or light elements (impossible below Z= 4 and only large amount for Z between 4 and 11). The materials laboratory has extended its capabilities with the installation of a new detector that enables EDX data collection at very low kV (e.g. 1-3 kV) to provide elemental analysis of nano-materials and extreme light element sensitivity including detection of Lithium (Z=3).

All SEMs equipment in our laboratories  (i.e. FEG-SEM ∑igma, FEG-SEM ∑igma 500, FIB-SEM XB540) are equipped with EDX detectors from Oxford Instruments.