Dear All, I acquired Cd L3-edge spectra of some binary and ternary mixtures in varying proportions and for the individual components. The mixtures were created on Cd-mass basis. Then, I tried to fit the reference spectra to the spectra of the mixtures using linear combination fitting of Athena to get their abundance. However, the results were disappointing despite all spectra were carefully energy calibrated and normalized, so I decided to create simple mathematical binary and ternary mixtures by summing up the spectra of the individual reference spectra. After that I did an edge-step normalization in excel and imported the normalized calculated mixtures into Athena. Then, I tried the fitting again to exclude mixing-failures and check sensitivity of LCF with the idealized spectra. Even though the results of the LCF of the mathematical mixtures were better compared to the real mixtures, LCF was also not able to reliable deconvolute these spectra into the individual reference spectra. Does anybody have an explanation for that? It would be nice if somebody could give me information about the mathematical fitting algorithm implemented in Athena. Attached is a data file of three mixtures (two ternary and one binary mixture) including the mathematical mixture created in excel (named calculated at the end). Mixing ratios are named 1to1to1 (meaning 1:1:1 of the components in the same order). For the 1:1:1 ternary mathematical mixture the deconvolution was very good, but the others need improvement. I hope I made my problem clear this time. Thanks a lot! Wishes, Nina