Total Reflection X-ray Fluorescence: Suitability and Applications for Material Characterization

Total Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence (TXRF) is a sophisticated advanced version of Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (EDXRF). It is an advanced X-ray spectrometric method, which uses the innovative idea of external total reflection of X-rays to be utilized for ultra-trace, trace and microanalysis. Due to the advantageous features of this technique, which includes requirement of minute sample for analysis, low detection limits, its analytical capability to determine both metals as well as non-metals ranging from carbon to uranium, simple calibration and quantification, and its capability of analyzing surface and thin film as well as depth profiling, TXRF has found numerous applications in almost every research areas of material development and characterization. The analytical capabilities of this technique is comparable to many well-established methods of material characterization and in fact, has been found to be superior in some cases. In the present article, the principle, analytical performance, and applications of TXRF are briefly summarized.