Background

Since glass is a unique material in that it has both the properties of being physically hard and optically transparent, it is used in an extremely wide range of application from products used in daily life to high-tech fields such as aerospace development. The major component of glass is silica (SiO₂), and other components contained in glass can directly impact its characteristics. For example, Na₂O can lower glasses' softening temperature, but excessive amount can deteriorate its physical and chemical durability. The amount of ferric oxide (Fe₂O₃) often times contained in the raw glass material can have undesirable effects on the color and clarity. It is therefore important to carefully control the contents of both major and minor components of the raw glass material in the manufacturing process to attain the desired characteristics in the finished glass product.

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis quickly and easily determines the contents of raw materials and can provide precise elemental analysis results. "SQX" is Rigaku's semi-quantitative analysis program to obtain concentrations by theoretical calculation using the fundamental parameter (FP) method in combination with the internal sensitivity library. The calculation is performed based on sequential scan measurement results.

This application note demonstrates the performance of the Supermini200 for the semi-quantitative analysis of silica sand and feldspar which are raw glass materials, with easy sample preparation and operation. These natural materials generally have large grain size and mineralogical inhomogeneities, which can degrade the accuracy of semi-quantitative analysis results. To overcome this problem, SQX analysis has a unique "Matching library" function which allows calculating the analysis result using sensitivities matched specifically to the inhomogeneous sample for improved accuracy.