Experimental check of the use of unconventional reference materials for EDS analysis in a TEM by extrapolation method based on pure elements

In this work, the use of unconventional reference materials to determine experimentally the Cliff-Lorimer factor for EDS quantitative analysis with a TEM is checked by means of an alternative experimental procedure. The k-factor is determined by the extrapolation method based on pure elements, by measuring the normalized X-ray intensities emitted by thin films of pure gold and pure silver of different thickness, accurately measured by X-ray reflectivity. The goal of this work is to confirm the value of the k-factor previously obtained by the use of unconventional reference materials consisting of a bi-layer of pure gold on pure silver. The current result is in accordance with the previous one when considering their error bars, however, their relative difference is about 13 %, probably due to some uncertainties in mass thickness measurements. The mass thickness measurement of the layers of pure elements needs to be performed by different methods in order to reduce its uncertainty.