Scope of the event

EXSA's main objective to promote innovation and cooperation of X-ray spectroscopists and analysts within Europe will be pursued by this international event, which takes place online June 21st-24th this year.

There will be four half day sessions including a meeting of the FP initiative. The sessions will start shortly after noon in central Europe allowing our colleagues around the world to join at a more or less convenient time in their respective time zones.

Giving a forum at the virtual conference to interact within the community will allow for discussion between, academic and industrial scientists.

  • XRS in environmental applications
  • XRS for novel materials including batteries, nanostructures, etc.
  • Instrumental development for XRS and its applications
  • Fundamental parameters

The Conference targets scientists from academia and industry as well as PhD students and PostDocs with understanding of X-Ray Spectrometry facing challenges in application of X-ray spectrometry. Beside the presentation of experts the event will give a platform for discussions between the participants.

Thanks to Wiley X-ray Spectrometry journal, two awards, one for the best oral presentation and one for the best poster presentation, will be bestowed to young scientists (e.g., Ph.D., post-doc level). These prizes will consist of a cash honorarium as well as a certificate. We look forward to receiving excellent contributions from our younger colleagues!

We organize as part of the virtual conference a panel discussion on

Towards market-ready products: Transferring techniques from large experimental facilities into innovation labs

This panel will be moderated by Bernhard Nensel, and we are happy we could convince experienced colleagues from academia and companies to join this discussion.

  • Gerald Seidler
  • Ioanna Mantouvalou
  • Bruno Vrebos
  • Andreas Pahlke
  • Dirk Wissmann

You will find the Flyer of #EXSA2021 here.


Invited speakers


EXSA Virtual Conference 2021 on X-ray Spectrometry

This event gives a forum to interact with the community and will allow for discussion between academic and industrial scientists.

Sessions including the following topics will be organized:

  • XRS in environmental applications
  • XRS for novel materials including batteries, nanostructures, etc.
  • Instrumental development for XRS and its applications
  • Fundamental parameters

Thanks to Wiley's X-RAY SPECTROMETRY journal, two awards, one for the best oral presentation and one for the best poster presentation, will be bestowed to young scientists (e.g., Ph.D., post-doc level). These prizes will consist of a cash honorarium as well as a certificate. We look forward to receiving excellent contributions from our younger colleagues!

The abstract submission for regular contributions is closed, but you still can submit an abstract for a post-deadline poster on the EasyChair platform.

  • Diane Eichert - chair
  • Michael Kolbe - chair
  • Burkhard Beckhoff
  • Jens Kessler
  • Marie-Christine Lépy
  • Ioanna Mantouvalou
  • János Osán
  • Charalampos Zarkadas

The registration fee for the event is 40 € (free for EXSA members).

  • In-situ metrology (for bio and energy materials)
  • High-resolution (local) μ-XRF
  • High-resolution (angular) GI/E-XRF
  • Quantification with Monte Carlo methods
  • Quantification with fundamental parameter approach
  • Fundamental parameters


You will find the Call for Abstracts here.

The registration fee for the virtual conference is 40 € (free for EXSA members).

Scientific contributions accepted for poster presentation should be prepared as a single sided pdf. You can provide as well a two minutes pitch video presenting your poster.

Instructions to prepare your talk or poster

In case your abstract submission is accepted as a poster contribution, please prepare your poster as a pdf file. We recommend doing it in the usual portrait format. Furthermore, you are welcome to provide a video file (mp4 preferred) of about 2 minutes as a pitch talk presenting your poster. Both files will be available on the conference website for the whole duration of the conference. These files will be accessible only to the participants of #EXSA2021 and will be deleted one week after the end of the conference.

These files need to be sent by email to conf2021@exsa.hu as soon as possible, at the latest by June 18, 2021. If your email system has a limit for accommodating attachments, we kindly ask you to send us a link to the cloud storage system of your choice, from which we can download the files. If you are facing a problem, please contact us.

In case your abstract submission is accepted as an oral contribution, your presentation will be live in the designated time slot. The duration of your talk will be of about 20 minutes including 15 minutes presentation and 5 minutes of discussion time. Please prepare your slides accordingly.

We will use a Webex system. You can try it at a test meeting following this link.

Call for Proceedings to be published in X-Ray Spectrometry

Peer-reviewed contributions will be published in a special issue of X-Ray Spectrometry (Wiley Analytical Science).
Registered authors of accepted contributions are invited to submit one manuscript for publication. Please note that no more than one manuscript per participant will be considered.
Manuscripts should be prepared in the strict format of X-Ray Spectrometry. No maximum number of pages has been specified.
Manuscripts should be submitted between June 10th and October 1st, 2021 following the instructions below.

Instructions for manuscript submission to X-Ray Spectrometry

  • Connect to the Manuscript Central of X-Ray Spectrometry here: mc.manuscriptcentral.com/xrs.
  • Log in using your XRS credentials or create a new account and select the ✎Author tab.
  • At the Author's dashboard, Start a New Submission and follow the online procedure which will guide you through.
  • The procedure requires the introduction of different types of data from authors' names and affiliations, to title and abstract, to the upload of files for the manuscript, tables, and figures. You can interrupt the procedure and complete it in a successive session. Please, remember to save the last input data.
  • To specify that the manuscript is a candidate for the EXSA2021 special issue, you need in the lower part of Step 1 to choose our conference proceedings where you select the special issue.
  • In Step 5, you can select an editor and should write there "Guest editor".

Event schedule*

The event takes place in the week starting June 21, 2021. The scientific talks and discussions will be Monday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday afternoon there will be the

Meeting of the Fundamental Parameter Initiative

This last session of the virtual conference will be organized together with the FP Initiative and continues with scientific FP presentations and discussions on joint collaborative initiatives on FP validations.

FP Initiative
Crab a coffee and meet your colleagues in the lounge.
#EXSA2021 chairs
13:45 - 14:15 Rising of X-ray absorption spectroscopy at laboratory scale: towards new research opportunities   René Bes
14:15 - 14:35 Laboratory (E)XAFS with HAPG von Hámos based spectrometers   Christopher Schlesiger, Sebastian Praetz, Richard Gnewkow, Wolfgang Malzer, Jannis Zimbalski and Birgit Kanngießer
14:35 - 14:55 Current application fields of laboratory-XAFS at the Technische Universität Berlin   Sebastian Praetz, Christopher Schlesiger, Wolfgang Malzer and Birgit Kanngießer
14:55 - 15:15 Laboratory optical pump soft X-ray probe NEXAFS spectroscopy for thin film analysis   Adrian Jonas, Richard Gnewkow, Birgit Kanngießer, Holger Stiel and Ioanna Mantouvalou
15:15 - 15:35 Compressive signal collection for dynamic XAFS in the home lab   Yousuf Hemani and Davide Bleiner
15:45 - 16:05 Characterization of the geometrical parameters of commercial Bruker instruments for quantitative in-lab grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence analysis   Philipp Hönicke, Nils Wauschkuhn, Ulrich Waldschläger, Juliette van der Meer, Armin Gross, Markus Kraemer, Thomas Wiesner and Burkhard Beckhoff
16:05 - 16:25 Illustrating sensitivity gradients within the detector field of view in TXRF using picoliter droplet residues   Sven Hampel and Ursula Fittschen
16:25 - 16:45 Properties of polycapillary optics dedicated to low-energy parallel-beam wavelength-dispersive spectrometer for synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence study   Pawel Jagodzinski, Dariusz Banaś, Aldona Kubala-Kukuś, Marek Pajek, Jakub Szlachetko, Marine Cotte and Murielle Salomé
16:55 - 17:15 Electronic Structure of Sulfur Atoms in Li-S Systems Studied by Laboratory-Based X-ray Emission Spectroscopy   Marko Petric, Matjaz Kavcic, Ava Rajh, Alen Vizintin, Robert Dominko and Sara Drvarič Talian
17:15 - 17:35 Machine Learning based element sensitive reconstruction of periodic nanostructures from Grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence measurements   Anna Andrle, Philipp Hönicke, Philipp-Immanuel Schneider, Dimitrios Kazazis, Yves Kayser and Victor Soltwisch
17:35 - 17:55 Nondestructive characterization of light elements in nanomaterials with GIXRF in the laboratory   Dieter Ingerle, Florian Meirer, Peter Wobrauschek and Christina Streli

Towards market-ready products: Transferring techniques from large experimental facilities into innovation labs

13:30 - 14:00 Quantitative analysis of environmental samples with a laboratory GIXRF spectrometer   Hikari Takahara
14:00 - 14:20 Traceable and reliable chemical analysis of aerosols by reference-free X-ray spectrometry   Yves Kayser, Janos Osan, Philipp Hönicke, Beatrix Pollakowski-Herrmann, Stefan Seeger and Burkhard Beckhoff
14:20 - 14:40 Characterization of unique aerosol pollution episodes in urban areas using X-ray fluorescence and absorption methods   Ottó Czömpöly, Janos Osan, Szabina Török, Veronika Groma, Endre Börcsök and Simone Pollastri
14:40 - 15:00 Simplifying the control of inorganic pollutants in water: the combined use of smart materials and XRF detection   Eva Margui, Clàudia Fontàs, Ignasi Queralt, Sofia Pessanha, Rafal Sitko and Beata Zawisza
15:20 - 15:40 Study of matrix effects in the analysis of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages by total-reflection X-ray fluorescence   Artem Maltsev, Rafail Yusupov and Sait Bakhteev
15:40 - 16:00 WDXRF and TXRF analysis of continental and lacustrine ferromanganese nodules   Victor Chubarov, Pashkova Galina, Svetlana Panteeva and Alena Amosova
16:00 - 16:20 Geometry optimization for a portable XRF analyzer of Hg contamination in wet sediments using an isotope source   Siwen An, David Krapohl, Charlotte González, Stefani Rydblom, Börje Norlin and Göran Thungström
16:30 - 17:00 Environmental Toxicity of Mercury: Insights from X-rays   Graham N. George, Susan Nehzati, Ashley K. James, Natasha V. Dolgova and Ingrid J Pickering
17:00 - 17:20 Characterization of aerosols dispersion and depositions generated for calibrating a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy prototype by means of total reflection X-ray fluorescence   Davide Ciniglia, Silvana De Iuliis, Roberto Dondè, Maria Grazia Perrone, Alessandra Zanoletti, Antonella Cornelio and Laura Borgese
17:20 - 17:40 Do anthropogenic activities threaten the Naica’s giant crystals?   Maria Elena Montero Cabrera, Isaí Castillo-Sandoval, Iván Jalil Antón Carreño-Márquez, Luis Edmundo Fuentes Cobas, Bernardo Enrique Pérez-Cázares, Hilda Esperanza Esparza-Ponce, Esperanza Menéndez-Méndez, María Elena Fuentes-Montero, Hiram Castillo-Michel and Diane Eichert
15:00 - 15:30 Structural and Compositional Inhomogeneity in Thin-film Solar Cells   Claudia S. Schnohr
15:30 - 15:50 Development of spatially and time resolved X-ray fluorescence-based quantification for energy materials   Claudia Zech, Philipp Hönicke, Yves Kayser and Burkhard Beckhoff
15:50 - 16:10 Spectroscopy and in-situ X-ray diffraction analysis on the corrosion process of the negative electrode by using a low-cost lead-acid electrochemistry cell   Diego Osmar Galeano Espinola, Marcelo Honnicke, Fabio Plut and Rodrigo Basso
16:10 - 16:30 Structural investigation of Fe3+-doped ZnO via XANES spectroscopy   Kloudene Salazar, Jonah Micah Inguito, Verdad Agulto, Melvin John Empizo, Nobuhiko Sarukura, Pinit Kidkhunthod, Suchinda Sattayaporn, Vallerie Ann Samson and Roland Sarmago
16:40 - 17:10 The Elemental Calibration of PIXL and X-ray Instrument Development Beyond Mars 2020   Chris Heirwegh
17:10 - 17:30 Exploring a new semi-quantification procedure of the coloring matters used in the complex systems of prehistoric paintings   Antoine Trosseau and Ina Reiche
You are invited to discuss with the auditorium your view on the status of XRS, e.g., on the special topic of X-rays involved in hybrid techniques.
13:30 - 13:35 Opening remarks FP session   FP session chairs
13:35 - 13:55 Set-up and upgrade of an electrical-substitution radiometer for absolute calibration of photon fluxes   Víctor H. Elvira, Marie-Christine Lépy and Yves Ménesguen
14:00 - 14:20 A high-energy resolution metallic magnetic calorimeter dedicated to the metrology of the X-rays emitted by nuclides below 10 keV   Matias Rodrigues, Jörn Beyer, Christian Enss, Arshjot Kaur, Sebastian Kempf, Karsten Kossert, Martin Loidl, Michael Paulsen, Philipp Chung-On Ranitzsch and Mathias Wegner
14:30 - 14:50 METHODOLOGIES FOR THE DETERMINATION OF FP VALUES AT PTB AND RECENT RESULTS   Burkhard Beckhoff, Philipp Hönicke, Rainer Unterumsberger, Nils Wauschkuhn and André Wählisch
15:00 - 15:20 Spectral shapes of selected L transitions in rare earth metals   Csilla Szabo-Foster

Thanks to Wiley's X-RAY SPECTROMETRY journal, two awards, one for the best oral presentation and one for the best poster presentation, will be bestowed to young scientists (e.g., Ph.D., post-doc level). These prizes will consist of a cash honorarium as well as a certificate.

  • joint reflection on the study groups
  • discussion on joint collaborative initiatives on FP validations
  • follow-up activities and future workshops

*The schedule is still preliminary and subject to changes on short notice. Moving the mouse over the given times should show them to you in your timezone.


for the cooperation and its major sponsoring members allowing us to organize this event.

Event supported by