Research and Development of X‐Ray Spectroscopy Based on Polycapillary Optics at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati

In the last years, at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati the X‐ray optics group has developed a series of prototypes based on polycapillary optics that allow to perform a full X spectroscopy analysis. This paper presents preliminary results for three different prototypes: the first allows transmission X‐imaging with a resolution less than 6 μm; the second one allows 2D elemental mapping with a resolution less than 100×100×μm2.The identification of ice core insoluble mineral aerosol source areas is an important tool for the understanding of present day and past pathways of atmospheric transport toward the poles and the paleoclimatic information. To achieve this result it is very helpful to determine the geochemical composition of atmospheric dust particles deposited over the ice sheets and archived in ice core samples and to compare it with the composition of potential source areas sediments. The main experimental challenge is the very low concentration of mineral materials trapped in the snow, especiall...