sample was first proposed by Glocker and Schreiber in 1928. Today, the method is used as a non-destructive analytical technique, and as a process control tool in many extractive and processing industries. In principle, the lightest element that can be analysed is beryllium (Z = 4), but due to instrumental limitations and low X-ray yields for the light elements, it is often difficult to quantify elements lighter than sodium (Z = 11), unless background corrections and very comprehensive inter-element corrections are made. Energy dispersive spectrometry In energy-dispersive spectrometers (EDX or EDS), the detector allows the determination of the energy of the photon when it is detected. Detectors historically have been based on silicon semiconductors, in the form of lithium-drifted silicon crystals, or high-purity silicon wafers. Si(Li) detectors These consist essentially of a 3–5 mm thick silicon junction type p-i-n diode (same as PIN diode) with a bias of −1000 V across it. The lithium-drifted centre part forms the non-conducting i-layer, where Li compensates the residual acceptors which would otherwise make the layer p-type. When an X-ray photon passes through, it causes a swarm of electron-hole pairs to form, and this causes a voltage pulse. To obtain sufficiently low conductivity, the detector must be maintained at low temperature, and liquid-nitrogen cooling must be used for the best resolution. With some loss of resolution, the much more convenient Peltier cooling can be employed. Wafer detectors More recently, high-purity silicon wafers with low conductivity have become routinely available. Cooled by the Peltier effect, this provides a cheap and convenient detector, although the liquid nitrogen cooled Si(Li) detector still has the best resolution (i.e. ability to distinguish different photon energies). Amplifiers The pulses generated by the detector are processed by pulse-shaping amplifiers. It takes time for the amplifier to shape the pulse for optimum resolution, and there is therefore a trade-off between resolution and count-rate: long processing time for good resolution results in "pulse pile-up" in which the pulses from successive photons overlap. Multi-photon events are, however, typically more drawn out in time (photons did not arrive exactly at the same time) than single photon events and pulse-length discrimination can thus be used to filter most of these out. Even so, a small number of pile-up peaks will remain and pile-up correction should be built into the software in applications that require trace analysis. To make the most efficient use of the detector, the