µ-XRF analysis of glasses: a non-destructive utility for Cultural Heritage Applications.

This paper presents an analytical approach for a non destructive study of Cultural Heritage glass finds by µ-XRF technique which can be used for quantitative analysis of small volumes of solid samples, with a sensitivity that is superior to the electron microprobe, but inferior to an ICP-MS system. An experimental set-up with natural and synthetic glass standards is here proposed for the quantitative analyses from major to trace elements of not sampling or handling glasses by means of the commercial µ-XRF Eagle III-XPL. The described method was applied to the commercial Glass standards produced by the Society of Glass Technology and to Islamic glasses from Veh Ardasid (Central Iraq), dated III-V century A.D. and previously analyzed by ICP-MS and SEM-EDS technique.1,2 Major/minor (Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, K, Ca, Ti, Fe) and trace elements (from Cr to Zr) were first determined by both a fundamental parameter with standards method and with the intensity correction method proposed by Lucas-Thooth and Pyne. 3,4. The tested reference glass samples show a good accuracy better than 5% on major elements with both correction routines. Trace elements display better accuracy than 5% for trace elements > 100 ppm and better or comparable to 10% for trace elements < 100 ppm simply using a fundamental parameter with two standards correction routine, resulting more accurate than the algorithm of Lucas-Thooth and Pyne 3,4 using the same small number of standards. Therefore, it has to be emphasized that the ??-XRF is a well suited elemental analysis technique for the study of small not sampling glass finds due to its good accuracy, reproducibility and low detection limits (? tens ppm) despite it being a non destructive analytical technique.