No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Impact of Biological Microanalysis on Analytical Electron Microscopy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2020
Extract
Advances in energy-dispersive detector technology were largely responsible for electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) becoming a valuable tool for biologists, while development of EPMA received much impetus from the special needs of biological research. Solid-state energy-dispersive detectors placed in close proximity to specimens in transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) provided the necessary geometric detection efficiency, hence sensitivity and higher spatial resolution, and the reasonably good energy resolution of these detectors permitted reliable separation of overlapping peaks, such as the Kα peak of the biologically important messenger, calcium, and the Kβ peak of another, biologically much more abundant element, potassium. Improvements in the pole-piece design of TEMs to allow closer access of the X-ray detector to the specimen and interfacing the software of one company with detectors provided by another also helped progress, and EPMA, in conjunction with rapid freezing of cells, was ready to address important biological problems, such as the dynamics of the composition of intracellular organelles in situ.
- Type
- 30 Years of Energy Dispersive Spectrometry in Microanalysis
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Microscopy Society of America