Electron microprobe

An electron microprobe (EMP), also known as an electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) or electron microprobe analyzer (EMPA), is an analytical instrument used to non-destructively determine the chemical element composition of small volumes of solid materials. The instrument bombards the sample with a high-intensity electron beam, which then emits X-rays. The X-ray wavelengths emitted are characteristic of particular chemical elements and are analyzed using X-ray spectroscopy. The instrument has some similarity to a scanning electron microscope (SEM), but is characterized by a fixed electron beam rather than a scanning one. An EMP is primarily used for elemental analysis rather than imaging and the images it does produce are two-dimensional cross-sections rather than images of surface topography that would be seen in a SEM image.