SANDRA: a portable XRF system for the study of Mexican cultural heritage

摘要

This work presents the portable X-ray system SANDRA (Sistema de Analisis No Destructivo por RAyos X or System for Non Destructive Analysis using X-rays) developed at the Physics Institute of the UNAM, Mexico, for the study of Mexican cultural heritage collections. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) SANDRA device can use 75 W Mo, Rh and W X-ray tubes and Amptek Si-PIN and Cd-Te detectors that are selected and combined depending on the elemental range detection requirements and the specific problem to be studied. In this paper, a full description and characterization of this system, sensitivities for the X-ray tubes and detectors as well as the detection limits are discussed. Examples of applications to technological studies on pre-Columbian metallic artifacts and analysis of color materials of ancient Mexican codex are shown.