The standard nuclear reaction for profiling carbon in the surface and near-surface regions, the 12C(d, p) 13C reaction, suffers from a relatively poor depth resolution due to the low stopping powers of deutrons and protons. A reaction involving alpha particle would provide larger stopping power, but mass systematics cause the Q values for such reactions as the (d, α) or (p, α) to be negative for carbon. Although the 12C( 3He, α 0) 11C reaction has a positive Q value of 1.857 MeV, the low value results in the situation that at backward angles the energy of the observed alpha particles is lower than that of the elestically scattered 3He particles and that the protons from the competing ( 3He, p) reaction may interfere. However, it is shown in this paper that this reaction provides a reasonable method od high-depth resolution profiling of carbon provided that a magnetic spectrometer is utilized. Examples are given of profiling carbon in cases of both implantation and diffusion distributions. The improved depth resolution generally allows clear separation of the ubiquitous thin surface layer of carbon from the near surface distributions.