Question

Energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) is a commonly used characterization technique in Materials Science to determine the elemental composition of materials. To do this, EDX measures the emitted characteristic x-rays from materials (e.g. Kα), generated due to the excitation of electrons from a lower energy shell to a higher energy one.

Assume that you are working as a Materials Engineer in a company that produces cars. Your company has purchased 1 ton of Ni-Cr-Co alloy to fabricate a certain part of the car. Your boss asks you to determine whether the material your company purchased is, in fact Ni-Cr-Co alloy. If it there is another element present in the material, you will return the purchased material and stop production. So, you perform EDX analysis on your material and you see that three x-ray energies are detected: 5416, 6406 and 7479 eV. Determine which elements are present in your material and decide whether you should send the purchased material back or continue production. (Speed of light: 3 x 108 m/sec, Planck’s constant: 6.63 ×10−34J⋅s =4.136×10−15 eV.sec)

Answer 1

I have an issue with the 6.406 keV energy. Check the chart of EDX analysis. https://www.unamur.be/services/microscopie/sme-documents/Energy-20table-20for-20EDS-20analysis-1.pdf