Literature trends in x-ray emission spectrometry in the period 1990-2000 - a review

A quantitative overview is given of the role that x-ray emission analysis methods, in their various forms, play in the literature for the period from January 1990 to the end of December 2000. The major sources of information were computerized searches through Chemical Abstracts and Web of Science and, specifically for 1998, a manual search through Analytical Abstracts. Areas that are covered in this review pertain to the recent trends in x-ray emission spectrometry in general and in some specific techniques such as x-ray fluorescence analysis, synchrotron radiation-induced and particle-induced x-ray emission, total-reflection and micro-x-ray fluorescence analysis. A brief outline of recent developments in the specific fields is given, with emphasis on the various excitation and detection modes, on different application areas and on relative contributions of different countries and languages to the x-ray emission spectrometry literature. It appears that environmental monitoring and research continue to be particularly important publication fields for x-ray spectrometry. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.