Dear fellow EPMA-ers,

Was hoping I could draw on your wealth of experience, as I have a customer interested in analyzing cinnabar.

They are interested in both major and minor/possible trace components, which would normally require fairly high currents at high accelerating voltage. My worry is that the heat from the beam will cause the Hg to start cooking off, which I can't imagine would be good either for the instrument or the quality of the data.

I was wondering if anyone had done any cinnabar work in the past, and whether this is worth worrying about.

As a side note, does anyone have any idea what the thermal conductivity of cinnabar might be? I tried to do a dT calculation using Castaing's formula, but I can't find a value for Ct anywhere. I vaguely remember the boiling point for mercury being ~300-350C, so staying below that certainly seems like a good idea.

Thanks much in advance for your help,
OKN

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Dr. Owen K. Neill
Manager, EPMA and XRD Laboratories
Peter Hooper GeoAnalytical Laboratory
School of the Environment
Washington State University
Phone: (509) 335-6770
Fax: (509) 335-3700

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