Final Report on Small Particle Speciation for Forensics Analysis by Soft X-ray Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy

Technical Report · Fri Sep 30 04:00:00 EDT 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1358309· OSTI ID:1358309

Pacold, J. I. ^[1]; Altman, A. B. ^[2]; Donald, S B ^[3]; Dai, Z. ^[3]; Davisson, M. L. ^[3]; Holliday, K S ^[3]; Knight, K. B. ^[3]; Kristo, M. J. ^[3]; Minasian, S. G. ^[1]; Nelson, A J ^[3]; Tyliszczak, T ^[1]; Booth, C. H. ^[1]; Shuh, D. K. ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
3. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

Materials of interest for nuclear forensic science are often highly heterogeneous, containing complex mixtures of actinide compounds in a wide variety of matrices. Scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) is ideally suited to study such materials, as it can be used to chemically image specimens by acquiring X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) data with 25 nm spatial resolution. In particular, STXM in the soft X-ray synchrotron radiation regime (approximately 120 – 2000 eV) can collect spectroscopic information from the actinides and light elements in a single experiment. Thus, STXM combines the chemical sensitivity of X-ray absorption spectroscopy with high spatial resolution in a single non-destructive characterization method. This report describes the application of STXM to a broad range of nuclear materials. Where possible, the spectroscopic images obtained by STXM are compared with information derived from other analytical methods, and used to make inferences about the process history of each material. STXM measurements can yield information including the morphology of a sample, “elemental maps” showing the spatial distribution of major chemical constituents, and XANES spectra from localized regions of a sample, which may show spatial variations in chemical composition.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-07NA27344
• OSTI ID: 1358309
• Report Number(s): LLNL-TR--704343
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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