Development of Electron Probe Instrumentation duringThose Early Days When Professor Castaing Visited JapanRyuichi Shimizu*Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, JapanAbstract: The development of the electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) in Japan in the early 1960s, when Prof.R. Castaing visited Japan, is briefly outlined. In 1955, a review article was published by Prof. G. Shinoda inOyobutsuri, the most popular journal in Japan, in which the EPMA was introduced. In 1957, a research groupat the University of Tokyo started to develop an EPMA with a Grant-in-Aid for Developmental Research. Theirresearch results led to the funding of a 2-year Grant-in-Aid for Cooperative Research Project (April 1960 toMarch 1962), which was chaired by Prof. Y. Sakaki. Prof. G. Shinoda who became the chairman of that projectin April of 1962 led that group for another year until March of 1963. It was just after the start of the projectthat Prof. R. Castaing visited Japan in September of 1960 as a representative of the French Mission Culturelle.This visit gave a great push forward for the commercial development of EPMA instruments in Japan. The firstthree commercial EPMA instruments from Hitachi, JEOL, and Akashi Ltds. were installed in Tohoku, Osaka,and Waseda Universities in 1962, 1963, and 1964, respectively. Photographs of those first commercial EPMAsystems, together with a brief description of the activities of the cooperative research projects, are presented.Key words: Prof. R. Castaing, electron microprobe instruments, cooperative research on electron probe mi-croanalyzer, first commercial electron probe microanalyzers, early 1960s, university–industry cooperationINTRODUCTIONThe development of the electron probe microanalyzer(EPMA) in Japan in the early 1960s, when Prof. RaimondCastaing visited Japan, is listed in Table 1. In May 1955,Prof. Shinoda introduced the development of the EPMA ina review article on “Non-Destructive Quantitative Analysisby X-ray Methods” that was published by Oyobutsuri (Jour-nal of Applied Physics, written in Japanese; Shinoda, 1955).That article included a schematic diagram of the EPMAsystem. Prof. Shinoda, who referred to the paper of Castaingand Guinier that had been published in 1953 in the journal,Analytical Chemistry, drew attention to its constructionwhich included an optical microscope. That article, pub-lished in the most popular journal in Japan, was very prob-ably the paper that got the attention of the people involvedin the field of material science, in particular, the field ofmetallurgy, who became interested in EPMA. This land-mark article stimulated the development of EPMA in Japan.COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROJECTSIn 1957, the funding provided by the Grant-in-Aid for Sci-entific Developmental Research to the group headed byProfs. T. Akutagawa, I. Gokyuu, and H. Abe was used toReceived October 18, 1999; accepted February 28, 2000.*Corresponding author, at Department of Information Processing, Osaka Institute ofTechnology, 1-79-1, Kitayama, Hirakata, Osaka 573-0169, JapanMicrosc. Microanal. 7, 119–123, 2001DOI: 10.1007/s100050010066Microscopy ANDMicroanalysis© MICROSCOPY SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2001develop the EPMA in cooperation with the Hitachi groupthat was headed by Drs. F. Tadano and H. Watanabe. Thisproject led to the first prototype EPMA made in 1958 inJapan, the XMA-2 (Fig. 1), that Watanabe described in de-tail in an article published in 1959. Their research results ledto the funding of a 2-year Grant-in-Aid for CooperativeResearch Project from April 1960 to March 1962 called“The Study of X-ray Microanalyzer,” that was chaired byProf. Y. Sakaki and consisted of 37 members from variousuniversities, national institutes, and industries (unpublishedreport).It was just after the start of the Cooperative ResearchProject that Prof. Castaing visited Japan in September of1960 as a representative of the French Mission Culturelle.He gave several talks on EPMA in different places, includ-ing: (1) Hitachi Central Research Laboratory on the 19th ofSeptember; (2) Nagoya University for the members of theCooperative Research Project on the 23rd and 24th of Sep-tember (Fig. 2), where the program covered: (i) Applicationof Magnet-Prism for electron and ion optics, (ii) X-raymicroanalyzer (1)—accuracy and reliability, (iii) X-ray mi-croanalyzer (2)—detection of light elements; and (3) OsakaUniversity on the 28th of September. During his stay inJapan from September 18th to October 4th, Prof. Castaingtalked about his work on EPMA a total of six times whichincluded two informal presentations. This visit of ProfessorCastaing gave a great push forward for the commercial de-velopment of EPMA instruments in Japan.DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCIAL EPMASOne year after the visit of Prof. Castaing, in 1961, JEOL alsoreported its first prototype EPMA, JXA-2 (Fig. 3). In 1962,Hitachi installed its first commercial EPMA, the XMA-3(Fig. 4), at Tohoku University. Soon afterwards, the firstcommercial EPMA made by JEOL, the JXA-3 (Fig. 5), wasinstalled at Osaka University, and it was followed by the firstcommercial EPMA (Fig. 6) from the Akashi Co. that wasinstalled at Waseda University in 1964.Research groups at these Universities, where the firstcommercial EPMAs from different companies had been in-stalled, started different and unique studies with EPMAs.Profs. Sanbongi and Omori’s group at the Research Insti-tute of Mineral Dressing and Metallurgy at Tohoku Uni-versity in cooperation with the steel industry, have, sincethen, been heavily involved in applying EPMA to metal-lurgy, in particular, to establishing the identification of vari-ous mineral phases containing lime, ferrous oxide, andsilica in self-fluxed sinter that is a principal burden of ironblast furnaces. At Osaka University, Prof. Shinoda’s groupstarted to develop a Monte Carlo simulation program withthe aim of determining (z)-functions theoretically, to-gether with the determination of (z)-functions for mul-tilayered specimens with EPMA. The installation of theEPMA at Waseda University initiated Prof. Ichinokawa’swork on the instrumental development of electron beaminstruments, which has gone on for the past 40 years andTable 1. Early Research in Japan on the Development of EPMA InstrumentationaYear Research Instrumentation1951 Ph.D. thesis (R. Castaing)1955 Review paper (G. Shinoda)1957 Grant-in-aid for developmental scientific research (University ofTokyo and Hitachi
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