Abstract
The analysis of thin films is of central importance for functional materials, including the very large and active field of nanomaterials. Quantitative elemental depth profiling is basic to analysis, and many techniques exist, but all have limitations and quantitation is always an issue. We here review recent significant advances in ion beam analysis (IBA) which now merit it a standard place in the analyst's toolbox. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) has been in use for half a century to obtain elemental depth profiles non-destructively from the first fraction of a micron from the surface of materials: more generally, "IBA" refers to the cluster of methods including elastic scattering (RBS; elastic recoil detection, ERD; and non-Rutherford elastic backscattering, EBS), nuclear reaction analysis (NRA: including particle-induced gamma-ray emission, PIGE), and also particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE). We have at last demonstrated what was long promised, that RBS can be used as a primary reference technique for the best traceable accuracy available for non-destructive model-free methods in thin films. Also, it has become clear over the last decade that we can effectively combine synergistically the quite different information available from the atomic (PIXE) and nuclear (RBS, EBS, ERD, NRA) methods. Although it is well known that RBS has severe limitations that curtail its usefulness for elemental depth profiling, these limitations are largely overcome when we make proper synergistic use of IBA methods. In this Tutorial Review we aim to briefly explain to analysts what IBA is and why it is now a general quantitative method of great power. Analysts have got used to the availability of the large synchrotron facilities for certain sorts of difficult problems, but there are many much more easily accessible mid-range IBA facilities also able to address (and often more quantitatively) a wide range of otherwise almost intractable thin film questions.
Highlights
The analysis of thin films is of central importance for functional materials, including the very large and active field of nanomaterials
ion beam analysis (IBA) has been used by analytical chemists for over half a century, ever since Rubin et al published their landmark paper in 1957.1 in the 1990s IBA methods were rather overtaken by rapid developments in other techniques, in the last decade or so some dramatic developments in IBA have made it significantly more powerful, and it is these we aim to describe and explain here
The nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) methods are not emphasised in this Review since they have not significantly improved recently, the IAEA has sponsored work[65] which may yield dramatic improvements in particle-induced gamma emission (PIGE) quite soon.[66]
Summary
What is Ion Beam Analysis (IBA)? We will answer this question implicitly by an historical survey, which will shed light on the synergies that are central to our subject: modern IBA depth profiling of thin films. It is informative to trace the history of IBA with this in mind, since the various atomic and nuclear excitations that underlie most of the complementary analytical techniques of relevance to thin film analysis (including IBA) were all discovered together at the birth of the new physics Central to this Review is the recognition that “IBA” is itself a cluster of complementary techniques that historically were handled separately but which we have recently learned to handle self-consistently in a synergistic way. We will return to this interesting example below (§4.6 and Fig. 23)
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