XRF is a spectrometric technique that can be applied to many materials for composition analysis, as well as coating and multilayer thin-film thickness measurements. As with all analytical instrument purchase decisions, the driving factor should be the specifics of the application.
The following will present important factors to consider when choosing XRF configurations to measure thin-film coatings. We will be focusing on Energy Dispersive XRF (EDXRF) systems that are now offered in a number of benchtop configurations and more recently in portable, handheld configurations1.