A new portable XRF spectrometer with beam stability control

A new portable XRF spectrometer which allows the control of the energy and the intensity stability of the emitted x-ray beam has been designed and realised. The control is obtained by measuring the x-ray fluorescence generated by a Ag/Ba double-thin-target when crossed by the x-ray beam during the measurements. The silver and barium fluorescence K lines are detected by an ancillary Si-PIN detector and analysed by a software developed at the LNS/INFN laboratories. The new portable spectrometer, the beam stability-control method, the test on the system stability as well as some quantitative applications are presented and discussed