Objective
In the last decade, many instrumental analytical tiquues which previously only provided average information on a large sample have developed microscopic equivalents. The drive for this development is twofold: (1) the increasing degree of material complexity and (2) the arowing need to measure local properties of natural and man-made materials. Unfortunately, the most well-established microscopic method of elemental analysis (EPXMA - electron probe X-ray micro-analysis) only yields major element information In many disciplines, however, such as forensic science and materials characterisation in the cultural heritage sector, there is an acute and growing need for compact and non-expensive equipment which permit to obtain minor and trace-level compositional fingerprints of various materials and sample shapes for specific areas of large objects and/or from minute samples.
The overall objective of the present proposal is to develop and introduce on the market a compact, light-weight and inexpensive micro-beam XRF instrument that allows local analysis of sub-mm samples with minor/trace level sensitivity and that can be used either as a table-top unit in a laboratory environment ('ex situ' measurements, (e.g. of forensic materials gathered at a crime site) but is also readily transportable and positionalble so that is can be employed for 'in situ' measurements (e.g. of artistic objects on display in a museum), providing routine compositional information with a lateral resolution of 50-200 um at the 10 -100 pa absolute/10-100 ppm relative level of detection. The COPRA device will only need external AC power for its operation.
Two prototype devices will be designed and constructed, consisting of:
* a freely positionable measuring head, containing the following components: (i)a compact, micro-focus X-ray tube (Mo anode) with integrated HV supply, (ii) a X-ray focussing device(tapered monocapillary or polycapillary X ray lens),
(iii) a Peltier-cooled compact solid-state detector + electronics and (iv) a long-distance microscope objective+camera and laser-positioners.
* a control-PC to be connected to the measuring head by a single cable.
Two SOP's (standard operating procedures) permitting the use of the device by non-expert personnel in forensic/cultural heritage fingerprint applications will be developed, validated and demonstrated under realistic circumstances. The two application area's addressed by the SOP's are: (a) fingerprinting/source identification of forensic glass fragments from burglary/vandalism cases and
(b) provenance analysis and authentification of Ag-alloy coins and treasure objects
The project will be executed by a consortium of 5 partners, (a university, two SME's, a forensic and a museum laboratory) and 4 subcontractors.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsoptical sensors
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsmicroscopy
- engineering and technologymaterials engineering
- medical and health sciencesother medical sciencesforensic sciences
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