Surface Analysis by MeV Ion Beams and Microscopy

Material analysis, specially surface analysis of materials, has been increasingly important. A wide range of surface analysis techniques is available. The techniques are, generally, complementary. There are nuclear and non-nuclear techniques, e.g. microscopy. Nuclear techniques, which are nondestructive, permit analysis for a few microns near the surface. They have been applied to areas such as scientific, technologic, industry, arts and medicine, using MeV ion beams. Nuclear reactions permit to achieve high sensitivities for detection of light elements in heavy substrates and also discrimination of isotopes. We use ion-ion nuclear reactions, elastic scattering and the energy analysis method, where an energy spectrum is obtained of ions from the target for a chosen energy of the incident ion beam. The target composition and concentration profile information contained in the spectrum is computationally obtained through a computer program that has been developed for predicting such energy spectra. Predicted spectra obtained for variations of target parameters are compared with experimental data, giving that information. SEM and TEM are also used.