Microanalysis News
July 2014

Summer has finally arrived in New Jersey, and not a moment too soon! The sun is shining, the trees are fully green and the Garden State is living up to its name.

This past year our engineers have been busy developing new instruments and improving existing ones. Some of you may know that we recently introduced both a WDS system and an on-column micro-XRF system. Both of these systems run under our ESPRIT software platform, so if you already know how to run a Bruker EDS you’ll have no trouble learning how to run either one of these.

And speaking of new techniques, there has been a lot of buzz lately about a new technique for EBSD called Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction, or TKD. Using your existing EBSD system, you can now study the crystalline structure of nano-scale materials in your SEM. You’ll need to prepare your samples as for a TEM and mount them so the beam passes through the sample, but our new TKD toolkit makes this easy.  Read more about it below.

We’ve recently opened a new applications lab in Billerica, MA, and we are very pleased to announce the addition of Hosanna Lillydahl-Schroeder to our applications support team. If you're shopping for a new EDS system, you probably hear a lot about active area, small diameter end caps, and multiple detector. All of those features are designed to maximize count rate, which really means we are trying to increase solid angle. If you’d like to learn more about solid angle and how it can affect your test results, we’ve put together a nice tutorial to explain it all. You can read all about in our article titled “What is Solid Angle and Why is it Important?”

We hope you enjoy this issue of Microanalysis News, and if you have suggestions or contributions for future issues, please let us know. As always, we don't share your email address with anyone, and if you would like to be removed from our mailing list, just follow the instructions at the bottom of this newsletter. Thank you for trusting us with your email address.

Don Becker
Regional Sales Manager – Americas

What is Solid Angle and Why is it Important?

When performing an EDS experiment, we always try to maximize our count rate. This gives us better statistics and minimizes our acquisition time. One of the things that directly affects count rate is solid angle. This article examines the variables that affect solid angle, and therefore count rate, and the impact those variables have on experimental results. Learn more

New Applications Lab and New Applications Specialist

We are excited to announce the opening of our newest applications lab at the Bruker campus in Billerica, Massachusetts. Equipped with a new Field Emission SEM with EDS, EBSD, and on-column XRF, the new facility will expand our demo capabilities while providing more opportunity to interact with our customers. Going forward, our user schools will be conducted at the new lab to take advantage of the classroom facilities available on the Bruker campus. The address of our new lab is: Bruker Nano Analytics 19 Fortune Drive Billerica, MA  01821 To help staff our new applications lab, we are pleased to announce the addition of Hosanna Lillydahl-Schroeder to our applications support team. Hosanna holds a B.S. in Geology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.S. from Boston College. He has used SEM and EPMA techniques to conduct research in mineralogy, geochemistry, and rock deformation. Hosanna will be the principle operator of our new Field Emission SEM, and will be available for demos and customer training.

Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction in SEM

A new technique called  Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction, or TKD, has been developed as an SEM-based method capable of delivering the same type of results as EBSD, but with a spatial resolution improved by up to one order of magnitude. Utilizing existing EBSD hardware and software, TKD can be used to study electron-transparent samples, such asTEM lamella, free-standing films and crystalline nanoparticles. Recognizing the potential of this new technique, Bruker decided to integrate it into the QUANTAX EBSD system. The TKD mode in QUANTAX EBSD is designed to be user friendly and allow the acquisition of high quality data regardless of the users’ experience level. TKD analyses with QUANTAX EBSD also can be combined with EDS analyses, thanks to a special sample holder designed by Bruker. Find out more