Direct Collection of Reference Spectra

amics has two mechanisms for creating a standard material from reference spectra directly acquiring spectra from the sem eds system or post acquiring from the measured results direct acquisition from sem eds to directly acquire an x ray spectra and use it as a reference spectra for a new material must be done using a version of amics with an online license, and directly connected to the sem eds instrument the first step is to determine where the x ray data needs to be collected, which can be achieved by manually moving the sem stage to the target material and using the spot mode on the sem to freeze the beam to a fixed location if using this method, once the sem stage position is set, and the beam is frozen to the desired location, x ray spectra can be acquired using the reference spectra menu in the method ribbon this menu has the option to set the dwell time for the x ray acquisition as well as the number of spectra to be collected rather than moving the sem stage and freezing the beam to the target location it is also possible to set amics to acquire a bse image and set the acquisition position from the bse image this method still requires the sem stage to be moved into the area of interest, and then selecting the drop down menu from the collect option in the reference spectra menu will allow for the acquisition of a bse image once a bse image has been acquired, amics will display this and by right clicking on the image, the option to "collect x ray" will be available if selected, amics will adjust the beam to collect an x ray spectrum from the location of the mouse pointer if the multi point option was selected then multiple locations can be selected on the image note amics will perform a quick check on any new reference spectrum saved, to ensure it does not too closely match exisiting refernce spectra and it will issue a pop up warning in case there is a close match, and confirming if a duplicate reference spectra is required in general, it is best not to have duplicate spectra, but there can be special use cases where this can be of value any duplcate spectra will be matched based on their time stamp, with the older reference spectra used for matching prefentially the suggested workflow is to use the bse image to select an area of interest based on a similar grey scale level this will reduce the number of areas reviewed for manual spectrum acquisition it is also suggested that a new material classification method run a reclassification of data on a regular basis, as this will help highlight large areas still requiring reference spectra note it is suggested that manual spectra acquisition, via direct instrumentation or measurement, be complemented with the use of spectrum tree and grain panel steps to minimise the total number of reference spectra required and improve reclassification speed