Abstract
Absolute Mα x-ray production cross sections have been measured and calculated for heavy elements Au, Pb, Bi, and U for electron incident energies from the ionization threshold up to 38 keV. The experimental cross sections were deduced from M x-ray intensities emitted from ultrathin samples of the elements of interest deposited onto self-supporting C films. The measurements were performed using two electron microprobes and several wavelength-dispersive spectrometers. X-ray intensities were converted into x-ray production cross sections by using estimated values of the number of incident electrons, target thickness, and spectrometer efficiency. Experimental results are compared with calculated cross sections using different predictive formulae. Good agreement is found between the measured cross sections and the predictions from the distorted-wave Born approximation, which indicates that this approximation is suited for the calculation of M-shell ionization cross sections of heavy elements.