Elemental Analysis of Nanomaterial Using Photon-Atom Interaction Based EDXRF Technique

Abstract

Presence of trace amount of foreign impurities (both metallic and non-metallic) in standard salts used for sample preparation and during the synthesis process can alter the physical and chemical behavior of the pure and doped nano-materials. Therefore, it becomes important to determine concentration of various elements present in synthesized nano-material sample. In present work, the elemental and compositional analysis of nano-materials synthesized using various methods has been performed using photon-atom interaction based energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) technique. This technique due to its multielement analytical capability, lower detection limit, capability to analyze metals and non-metals alike and almost no sample preparation requirements can be utilized for analysis of nano-materials. The EDXRF spectrometer involves a 2.4 kW Mo anode x-ray tube (Pananalytic, Netherland) equipped with selective absorbers as an excitation source and an LEGe detector (FWHM = 150 eV at 5.895 keV, Canberra, US) coupled with PC based multichannel analyzer used to collect the fluorescent x-ray spectra. The analytical results showed good agreements with the expected values calculated on the basis of the precursor used in preparation of nano-materials.