Principle of Energy Dispersive x-ray Spectroscopy

Question

I have a question about the EDS

I don't understand how the detector can differentiate the Energy of incident x-ray simultaneously.

In my thought, the emitted x-ray from the sample have different energies and

It reaches the detector simultaneously in general.

So the current made by that x-ray photon bunches is gathered

It's impossible to differentiate the energy of each x-ray photon.

Am I wrong?

But the data of EDS shows the histogram of dispersive energy of emitted x-ray.

Plz let me know what I am wrong.

Answer 1

I don't understand how the detector can differentiate the Energy of incident x-ray simultaneously.

The simple answer is that the detector cannot.

Ideally the energy of a single photon is converted into a voltage pulse of size related to the energy of the photon.
An incoming photon produces electron-hole pairs and the resulting current pulse is integrated by a fet amplifier whose charge output is then “shaped” into a voltage pulse.

The flux rate of incoming photons is adjusted so that the dead time of the detector and peak pile up have a small effect on the accuracy of the output of the detector.
Furthermore sophisticated signal processing of the output voltage pulses can reduce the errors due to these effects.

This paper gives much more information about the whole process.