As noted earlier, electron beam techniques such as SEM
and electron probe rely on the material being exposed at
the surface. For some materials this is not practical,
either because of the time required, the need to avoid
chemical contamination of the inclusion that could
occur during polishing, or because the material is rare
and cannot undergo destructive preparation procedures.
Infrared spectroscopy could in some cases be used to
identify mineral inclusions, but would require doublepolished
wafers that are often impractical to prepare.
Synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence methods have been
applied to mineral inclusions in diamonds (e.g. Brenker
et al, 2007), but are not feasible for routine work.2