I had a zircon ZrSiO4 sample from black sand beach Northern coast Egypt. The sample was tested using STEM/EDS to observe peaks for Zr, Si, and O with no other elements. What is interesting is that when thermally treated at 1200 C the same major elements appeared but with traces of Fe, Ti, and Os. Is there any solid explaination for such result?
Your EDS spectra are labelled “map20250909*.spc”.
Are these the sum spectra of EDS maps obtained in the images S2_005HAADF.tif and S4_004HAADF.tif?
The energy range is different, what makes comparison difficult.
I assume the red areas are the EDS spectra. So what is the blue line? Many peak positions fit, but not the intensities.
In S2Mappingreportofselectedelements.png the blue lines appear for O, Si, and Zr, but not at ca. 0.93 keV (Cu?) and ca. 1.49 keV (Al?).
In S4Mappingreportofselectedelements.png the blue lines appear for O, Si, and Zr, but not at ca. 8 keV (Cu?) but without signal at ca. 7.75 keV. In the range 1…2,2 keV there is an unlabeled peak (Al?)
How many particles were measured for each state (scatter in composition between different grains?
Stefan Baunack, I welcome your remarks,@ and I will review them with the operator. But I still need an explanation or interpretation for the occurrence of impurities in the thermally treated sample, which didn't occur in the original sample (As received).
My intention was to suggest to look at the spectra carefully to make sure that the mentioned elements are really in the sample and not spectral artifacts or the result of wrong interpretation by the software.
1. The most obvious answer: two different particles you took your measurments from really differ in composition. You need a lot of measurments to be somewhat sure of EDS results. I would not stop until I have at least 10 measurments from a set and they are raher close.
2. There are no Os, Fe and Ti in your specimens. ID with software is not reliable enough, especially if you throw away strong peaks without indentifying them. It's not a good practice and can lead to wrong answeres. You spectra are not too clear, but so far I do not see any "contamination".
Stefan Baunack Vladimir Dusevich
Thank you for your responses. It was very helpful. After reviewing with the operator, these elements were excluded. They are probably articrafts.
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