The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 07, 2016
Filed:
Apr. 19, 2013
Fei Company, Hillsboro, OR (US);
Cornelis Sander Kooijman, Veldhoven, NL;
Hendrik Jan de Vos, Eindhoven, NL;
FEI Company, Hillsboro, OR (US);
Abstract
The invention relates to a method for analyzing the output signal of a silicon drift detector (SDD). A SDD is used for detecting X-rays emitted by a sample as a result of impinging radiation. The signal of a SDD comprises a number of randomly spaced steps, in which the step height is a function of the energy of the detected X-ray photon. The variance in step height is a function of the averaging time that can be used to determine the plateau between steps: averaging over a short interval results in more uncertainty of the plateau value than a long interval. By according a weight factor, a function of the variance such that a step with low variance (high reliability) is associated with a larger weight factor than a step with high variance (low reliability), measurement values with a low variance are emphasized. This results in better resolved spectra.