Development of a method for direct determination of solids as thin films by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis

Solid samples can be analysed as without a prior decomposition step, if they are pulverized and then embedded in a thin layer of a cold-setting polymer. This method is very appropriate for materials which are difficult to decompose or which can be easily contaminated. The sample components are evenly distributed in a thin layer, which improves considerably the signal-tonoise-ratio, and this leads to a decrease of the limits of detection. The reproducibility of the method was tested with cobalt oxide and yttrium oxide and also a mixture of these with silver oxide and manganese dioxide. Between 20 and 60 ng of these elements can be determined without difficulty, with a precision of ± 2–4%. The correlation coefficients found for the calibration graphs were between 0.994 and 0.999.