The two instruments are designed for use alongside electron microscopes to enhance its materials characterisation portfolio.
XSense is a parallel beam wavelength dispersive X-ray spectrometer (WDS) for elemental analysis on scanning electron microscopes (SEM).
Specifically designed for the lower energy range between 100 and 3,600 eV, the XSense spectrometer provides energy resolution down to 4 eV which enables both separation of closely spaced X-ray lines and highly sensitive trace element detection.
XTrace is a micro-spot X-ray source capable of enabling photon-induced micro X-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) spectrometry on SEM systems, in conjunction with Bruker’s energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) detectors.
The XSense WDS analyser uses X-ray mirror optics for efficient large angle X-ray collection and parallelisation. A fully motorised 3-axis auto-alignment system ensures fast, reproducible and stable positioning of the focal spot.
The parallel beam optics is fully retractable, and made of non-magnetic materials to avoid beam shift and image distortion.
When attached to an appropriate port of the SEM’s sample chamber, the XTrace system uses a low-power micro-focus X-ray tube and focusing polycapillary X-ray optics to produce a highly intense X-ray beam for sample irradiation with spot sizes smaller than 40 microns.
Both the XSense WDS analyser and the XTrace micro X-ray source are operated via ESPRIT 2.0, Bruker’s 4-in-1 analytical software suite which integrates EDS, WDS, EBSD and Micro-XRF under a single user interface.
