Chemical and oxidation-state imaging of mineralogical intergrowths: The application of X-ray photo-emission electron microscopy (XPEEM)

While the spatial resolution from which high quality L-edge XANES spectra have been extracted from mineralogical samples to date is about 100 nm, XPEEM offers an achievable resolution approaching 30 nm in the soft X-ray region (2000 eV and below). The non-destructive nature of XPEEM is of particular importance for natural and synthetic samples of high scientific value that may be required for further analysis by other microscopy, chemical analysis or isotope techniques. XPEEM can be used as a stand-alone spectromicroscopy method for the study of mineralogical samples or can be combined with other well established synchrotron methods such as hard X-ray, microfocus XANES spectroscopy and soft X-ray, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy.