Hi All,
I'm trying to acquire some long closely-spaced traverses across growth zones in Mn nodules. I've done this before using very thin quant maps, but unless I'm missing something, you can't do strip maps that are at an arbitrary angle to the X or Y axes. I was thinking that I could just do parallel long traverses, but there's a problem there too. I want to use really short counting time (ca. 1s) so the spectrometer move times will add a significant multiplier to the analysis time. Ideally I'd like to measure the first five elements over the whole traverse and then come back and repeat the points for the second 5 elements. Is this possible in PfE? I couldn't find a switch for this.
What I think I'm going to have to do is make two different sample setups and run the traverse once for each setup. Then I can use the Combine Selected Samples button to combine them for the matrix correction.
Can anyone verify that this is the easiest way to do this, or am I missing something?
Have a great weekend
Glenn
Hi Glenn,
There are at least a couple of possible ways to proceed here.
1. You could certainly set up two separate point traverse setups in Probe for EPMA each with 5 elements (to save spectrometer motion time) and then, as you mentioned, utilize the Combine Selected Samples button to obtain a complete analysis. That might be how I proceed.
2. Aside from rotating the sample to an orthogonal orientation in the stage holder, maybe JEOL has a map acquisition method to acquire a pixel mapping scan line at an arbitrary angle (though Probe Image does not), so then you could acquire your scan line that way and then to quantify it, utilize the conversion utility in Probe Image to convert the JEOL scan line map into the PrbImge format for subsequent quantification in CalcImage.
Alternatively you could specify a polygon mapped area using the JEOL software (which I know works), that delineates a diagonal strip across your Mn nodule. And then, once again, utilize the convert utility in Probe Image to convert your JEOL map to a PrbImg file for subsequent quantification in CalcImage.
Finally it should be mentioned that if you do obtain a single pixel wide diagonal scan line map using the JEOL (or Cameca software) and want to subsequently quantify that in CalcImage, that is fine, but you will not be able to output the data using Golden Software's Surfer app as Surfer GRD files must be at least 2 pixels wide. For (orthogonal) single scanline maps, you would need to convert them to a 2 pixel wide scan as described here:
https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1154.0I'm sure I've completely overlooked other methods, but that is my first thoughts on the question...