Surface layer destruction during ion beam analysis

Abstract

In ion beam analysis the decrease of the measuring signal with a number of incident ions, due to a destruction of the surface layer being analysed, depends critically on the lateral intensity distribution in the analysing ion beam. For the assumption of destruction in one step, the decrease was calculated and the obtained analytical formulae was fitted to the decrease as measured in ERDA and PIXE analyses. This allows to obtain values for the destruction cross sections for the ions and the samples in the analysis, as well as information about the lateral intensity distribution in the analysing ion beam.