Evaluation of different synchrotron beamline configurations for X-ray fluorescence analysis of environmental samples.

Synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF) is a powerful elemental analysis tool, yet synchrotrons are large, multiuser facilities that are generally not amenable to modification. However, the X-ray beamlines from synchrotrons can be modified by simply including X-ray filters or removing monochromators to improve the SR-XRF analysis. In this study, we evaluated four easily applied beamline configurations for the analysis of three representative environmental samples, namely a thin aerosol sample, an intermediate thickness biological sample, and a thick rare earth mineral specimen.