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1. Start ESPRIT Compact by clicking the program icon on the desktop or in the start menu. The login screen is displayed, prompting for username and password.
2. Enter the username and password and click the login button.
   1. For general purposes, use username: main / password: main
   2. For technician troubleshooting purposes, use username: supervisor / password: supervisor

Image Added

Figure 1: EDS Detector configuration window, click on spectrum icon to see this.

1. Use the arrow icon on the bottom left corner of the EDS configurator (Figure 1) to open the EDS Detector Configuration dialogue and set Pulse throughput and Maximum energy to Automatic. Check that the detector temperature status indicator is green.
2. Note the input count rate (ICR) in the EDS detector configuration box. This should be between 1.0-10 kcps (thousand counts per second) at minimum, and instructions to adjust microscope parameters to increase counts are in the following section. If the input count rate is too low, try the following steps.
   1. Verify that the SEM is operating with a working distance of 7-10 mm (Focus area of Nanoeye software)
   2. Adjust the position of the second condenser lens (CL2 in the EDS menu of the Nanoeye software)
   3. Consider increasing the accelerating voltage of the SEM, up to a maximum of 20 kV. Note that this may increase the undesireable effects of built-up electric charge, which diminishes image and EDS quality.
   4. Ask a technician for help with aligning the strip aperture and aligning the electron gun.

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• Any charging present on the surface of the sample will quickly degrade the quality of EDS spectra. In order to avoid charging: 
  • Use the lowest possible accelerating voltage that is appropriate for the material and elements of interest
  • Use an even smaller beam current
  • Ensure good electrical grounding using carbon tape,
  • Perhaps remove the sample to apply a thicker C coat to improve electron transport
• One proxy for quality of spectrum is to right click on the spectra and then select Logarithmic graph display, to make visible the background curve of the spectra. The background should taper smoothly to the highest values at the accelerating voltage used, e.g. if the microscope is being operated at 10 kV, the spectra should have smooth values up to 10 kV.
• Check the non-normalized mass % totals, which ideally should be around 100% for non-hydrous minerals.
• In order to interpret mass percent oxides, it is helpful to have an idea of the anticipated mineralogy of the sample, then compare the compositions to the ideal stochiometric mineral compositions from an online mineral database such as Webminerals of Mindat.
• Technicians can share access to a number of technical books on electron microanalysis if desired.

III. Uploading Data to LIMS

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