Elimination of self-absorption in fluorescence hard-x-ray absorption spectra

Fluorescence detection is a convenient way to measure x-ray absorption spectra in situations where samples cannot be made in the required configuration. However, self-absorption effects cause considerable distortion of spectra measured in fluorescence. We describe a straightforward procedure to correct for such distortion in the hard-x-ray region using the known energy dependence of the x-ray absorption coefficients. This procedure is used to obtain the vanadium K-edge spectrum of single crystal V2O3 and we demonstrate that self-absorption is properly corrected. This facilitates the use of fluorescence detection even in the hard-x-ray region. copyright 1999 The American Physical Society