Macro and micro full field x-ray fluorescence with an X-ray pinhole camera presenting high energy and high spatial resolution.

This work describes a tabletop (50 cm × 25 cm × 25 cm) full field X-ray pinhole camera (FF-XPC) presenting high energy- and high spatial-resolution. The FF-XPC consists of a conventional charge-coupled device (CCD) detector coupled, in a coaxial geometry, to a pinhole collimator of small diameter. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is induced on the samples with an external low-power X-ray tube. The use of the CCD as an energy dispersive X-ray detector was obtained by adopting a multi-image acquisition in single photon counting and by developing a processing algorithm to be applied in real-time to each of the acquired image-frames. This approach allowed the measurement of X-ray spectra with an energy resolution down to 133 eV at the reference value of 5.9 keV. The detection of the X-ray fluorescence through the pinhole-collimator allowed the two-dimensional elemental mapping of the irradiated samples. Two magnifications (M), determined by the relative sample-pinhole-CCD distances, are used in the present setup. A low value of M (equal to 0.35×) allows the macro-FF-XRF of large area samples (up to 4 × 4 cm(2)) with a spatial resolution down to 140 μm; a large magnification (M equal to 6×) is used for the micro-FF-XRF of small area samples (2.5 × 2.5 mm(2)) with a spatial resolution down to 30 μm.