Some comparisons between ELS and windowless EDS

The authors have been using a VG ELS 80 electron spectrometer and a Link LZ-5 windowless detector on their Philips EM 400T. The authors highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques for their applications, which lie in both materials and biological sciences. This initial work has been carried out with a tungsten filament; the EELS spectra have generally been collected at 120 keV with diffraction coupling and quantified with LINK software with calculated SIGMAK and SIGMAL cross sections. The x-ray detector has a take-off angle of 70, a two-position rotating turret containing a beryllium window and a hole, and a 10mm/sup 2/ crystal 33 mm from the specimen. Its nominal FWHM resolution at Mn Kα is 148 eV. All x-ray spectra were collected at 100 keV with the specimen tilted 300 toward the detector. The authors describe here three rather diverse applications from their laboratory, all of which impose a requirement for light-element analysis