Constancy in Elemental Composition of Identical and Symmetrical Ceramic Pairs

Recently much work has been done on Chinese porcelains with the use of the EDXRF technique; the results have been encouraging. In general, quantitative elemental determination requires tedious calibration procedures. In this study, we shall use a simplified, rapid EDXRF method to obtain quantitative values of trace elements of rubidium, strontium, yttrium, zirconium, and niobium. Briefly, the method makes use of the calibration curve on a plot of ln[intensity (cps)/concentration (%)] vs. ln[energy (keV)] for the elements Rb to Nb. Using such a calibration curve, we were able to obtain quantitative values of the concentration of the element by simply measuring its intensity under the same geometrical conditions.