Analysis of Cultural Heritage Alloy Reference Materials (CHARM) by two X-ray fluorescence spectrometers: results reliability assessment

This paper discusses the results of a large-scale analysis of the five Cultural Heritage Alloy Reference Materials (CHARM) standards for copper alloys by two X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometers in order to assess the reliability of the data. Hand-held portable (pXRF) and stationary energy dispersive (ED-XRF) spectrometers were used to investigate the elemental composition of the surfaces of the CHARM standards and their drilled samples (shavings). Our research show that the values obtained with both spectrometers are comparable to the standard values using a predictive model that adjusts the measurements to the specified standard values. XGBoost was chosen as the prediction algorithm.