TY - CONF A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan T1 - Standardized workflow for checking the performance of an EDS X-ray spectrometer at a Scanning Electron Microscope N2 - For test laboratories operating under accreditation schemes like ISO/IEC 17025 (ISO/IEC 17025), as the international reference for testing and calibration laboratories wanting to demonstrate their capacity to deliver reliable results, a periodical control of the critical instrumental parameters of an Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer (EDS) is required. This periodical check of an EDS is specified with exact procedures and materials in the ISO 15632:2021 ”Microbeam Analysis – Selected instrumental performance parameters for the specification and checking of energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometers for use in electron probe microanalysis” (ISO 15632). The EDS check can be simplified to the acquisition of only one 10 kV spectrum from a dedicated test material, EDS-TM002, which is made available by BAM since 2009 (https://webshop.bam.de/webshop_en/). The optional BAM software “EDX spectrometer check” is destined to automatically evaluate this spectrum and determine the performance of the EDS in terms of energy resolution and calibration, as well as possible alteration of low-energy efficiency due to detector contamination. Nearly 200 laboratories have the EDS-TM and associated software package in use. Practical examples based on various types of artifacts occurred in the EDS spectra and a long-term (>10 years) meticulous observation of the own spectrometers will be discussed. Different types of EDS spectrometers are considered, e.g. Si(Li) and SDD, of various window types (AP, the recent one Si3N4 or even windowless), and with different front contact layers (Au and Ni) (Hodoroaba and Procop, 2014). Evaluation of other parameters or effects such as the deadtime at different count rates or pileup effects is also explained with examples. T2 - Workshop "Automated Mineralogy" @ GEOANALYSIS 2022 CY - Freiberg, Germany DA - 06.08.2022 KW - EDS KW - X-ray spectrometer KW - Performance check KW - Test material KW - Standardized check KW - EDS-TM002 PY - 2022 UR - https://geoanalysis2021.de/en/workshops/automated-mineralogy AN - OPUS4-55460 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -