Recent work has drawn attention to the possibilities that small angle electron scattering offers as a source of information about the micro-structure of vacuum condensed films. In particular, this serves as a good detector of discontinuities within the films. A review of a kinematical theory describing the small angle scattering from a thin film composed of discrete particles packed close together will be presented. Such a model could be represented by a set of cylinders packed side by side in a two dimensional fluid-like array, the axis of the cylinders being normal to the film and the length of the cylinders becoming the thickness of the film. The Fourier transform of such an array can be regarded as a ring structure around the central beam in the plane of the film with the usual thickness transform in a direction normal to the film. The intensity profile across the ring structure is related to the radial distribution function of the spacing between cylinders.
Small-angle neutron polarimetry apparatus (SANPA): Development at the NIST Center for Neutron Research
