Drill cores are collected for various purposes. Their examination with Micro-XRF spectrometry can provide information on
- the geo-history through their structure
- the sequences of rocks and sediments
- the paleo-climatological development through sediment layers, etc.
This application example deals with the analysis of a drill core using the HyperMap option of the M6 JETSTREAM including post processing of data. Results are presented in the figures.
The first image is a video mosaic image of a drill core with a size of approx. 17 cm x 9.5 cm. The line in the center indicates the position of a line scan extracted from the HyperMap database.
Also presented is a map of the elements Ca, Fe, and Sr. Step size is 1.5 mm, resulting in a map size of 1120 x 631 pixels, acquired within 90 min. (5 ms pixel dwell time) at an input count rate of 85 kcps (output count rate 65 kcps).
Finally we present a line scan scan extracted from the HyperMap database. The line was broadened by 5 pixels on each side to improve statistics. Note that the sharp increases in Fe and Sr concentrations coincide with visible features in the map.