Although considerable advances have been made in Energy Dispersive Detectors for microanalysis, low energy analysis under 1000eV is still relatively poor due to detector response and inefficient production of low energy x-rays. X-ray optics fabrication methods by O’Hara and measurements by McCarthy et. al. indicated that it should be possible to fabricate x-ray optics that could be used to significantly increase the low energy x-ray flux seen by an EDS detector without increasing the beam current. Such an optic would be useful to increase low energy counts without moving the detector closer, which would simply increase the high energy counts and dead time.
New materials for high-energy-resolution x-ray optics