ZAF80: an improved quantitative analysis for the Flextran-language systems

ZAF80, a quantitative matrix correction technique for converting electron beam excited X-ray spectra to concentrations, is a major modification of Tracor Northern's ZAF Version 10 Flextran language program which was released in December 1977. This modification expands the printout, provides secondary fluorescence corrections for K and L lines whether measured or not, considerably decreases analysis computation time, determines and prints A-factors and atomic percents, prints concentration-count statistics in automatic modes, and stores computed concentrations from many points for later statistical analysis and plotting using an auxiliary program. All of the operational options that were in Tracor's original version are retained. ZAF80 is considerably longer than the original; thus, in the automatic mode the program loads in up to three sections. An initialization section which stores all variables is loaded and stays in memory. Next, a parameter initialization section is loaded and then that section replaced with the analysis section. The automatic versions operate as in-lays within the data collection programs. XML, the energy dispersive data collection program, will operate with ZAF80 in 16K if program shortening methods are used, but 20K or larger is preferred. TASK, the full microprobe control program, requires 26K.