Scientist recollects invention

March 3rd, 2009  |  by  |  Published in Research News

Klaus Kiel holding the original original solid state energy dispersive spectrometer while standing in front of the new generation equipment

Klaus Kiel holding the original original solid state energy dispersive spectrometer while standing in front of the new generation equipment

In 1968 NASA Ames Research Center scientist Klaus Keil, along with colleagues Ray Fitzgerald of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Kurt Heinrich from the National Bureau of Standards, described a new way to determine the elemental analysis or chemical characterization of a geologic sample.

Now a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa professor, Keil holds the team’s original solid state energy dispersive spectrometer while standing in front of the new generation JEOL Hyperprobe equipment now used by the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

The original device provided a much higher resolution for electron probe microanalysis than previous attempts had, making EDS a functionally valuable technique.

This development revolutionized the field of elemental analysis and ushered in a new era not only in electron probe microanalysis, but also in the fields of scanning electron microscopy, analytical transmission electron microscopy, X-ray fluorescence analysis and X-ray diffraction, Keil says.

A special symposium at the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2008 Meeting detailed 40 years of scientific advances made since the device was invented.

Says Keil: “The end of this progress is clearly not yet in sight.”


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