Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) is a well-established and powerful tool for nondestructive elemental analysis of virtually any material. It is widely used for environmental, industrial, pharmaceutical, forensic, and scientific research applications to measure the concentration of elemental constituents or contaminants. The fluorescing atoms can be excited by energetic electrons, ions, or photons. A particular EDXRF method, monochromatic microfocus X-ray fluorescence (MμEDXRF), has proven to be remarkably powerful in measurement of trace element concentrations and distributions in a large variety of important medical, environmental, and industrial applications. When used with state-of-the-art doubly curved crystal (DCC) X-ray optics, this technique enables high-sensitivity, compact, low-power, safe, reliable, and rugged analyzers for insitu, online measurements in industrial process, clinical, and field settings. This new optic-enabled MμEDXRF technique, called high definition X-ray fluorescence (HD XRF), is described in this paper.

Polycapillary optics are utilized in a wide variety of applications and are integral components in many state of the art instruments. Polycapillary optics operate by collecting X-rays and efficiently propagating them by total external reflection to form focused and parallel beams. We discuss the general parameters for designing these optics and provide specific examples on balancing the interrelations of beam flux, source size, focal spot-size, and beam divergence. The development of compact X-ray sources with characteristics tailored to match the requirements of polycapillary optics allows substantial reduction in size, weight, and power of complete X-ray systems. These compact systems have enabled the development of portable, remote, and in-line sensors for applications in industry, science and medicine. We present examples of the utility and potential of these optics for enhancing a wide variety of X-ray analyses.

The advanced online monitoring may allow real-time control of the process by the adjustment of process parameters, such as granulation time, and clearly qualifies as a PAT (process analytical technology).

A data-collection method for macromolecular crystals using convergent sources is described here. Because of the unique characteristics of the diffraction patterns, a software package CBMPRO has been developed speci®cally for processing data images collected with the convergent beam method (CBM). The resulting data sets from crystals with two different sets of unit-cell parameters are presented and compared. There is good agreement between data sets from the same type of crystals under slightly different experimental conditions and data sets collected and processed with CBM also agree well with those from conventional oscillation methods, marking an important step to establishing CBM as a viable alternate datacollection method for macromolecular crystals.