ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews former studies using soft x-ray scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) in the field of biomineralization with the scope of presenting the basic principles, advantages, and limits of this technique and mentioning some future developments that are expected. It shows how a combination of focused ion beam, STXM, and Transmission electron microscopy was used to characterize putative microfossils in a Paleocene phosphorite from Morocco at the nanometer scale. The importance of biominerals is not restricted to Earth sciences. Scanning can be performed line by line or for slower scans point by point. Spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy beam damage induced by STXM analyses can be detected as a mass loss and also a change in the element speciation. Hyperspectral data generated by STXM contain a wealth of information that may need specific statistical procedures to be analyzed. Phosphorites are large marine sedimentary formations containing high amounts of phosphate minerals.