X‐Ray Fluorescence and Comparison with Other Analytical Methods (AAS, ICP‐AES, LA‐ICP‐MS, IC, LIBS, SEM‐EDS, and XRD)

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is an elemental analysis technique that is used for elemental and chemical analysis of various materials including glass, metals, and ceramics. Several elemental analysis techniques such as laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS), ion chromatography (IC), etc. are widely used for the analysis of materials, particularly biological samples such as tooth, bone, nail, stone, blood, cancerous tissues, etc. There are many other similar methods such as time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and proton-induced X-ray emission spectroscopy (PIXE) that have many important biomedical applications. In this chapter, the authors present briefly the position of XRF including micro-XRF among some other the analytical methods including ICP-AES/MS, IC, LIBS, TOF-SIMS, and PIXE. The combination of XRF and X-ray diffraction (XRD) may be uniquely useful because information about the chemical composition of the materials may be used for their phase analysis with XRD.