Ion beam analysis with monolayer depth resolution

The paper is concerned with the analysis of surfaces and near-surface layers with monolayer depth resolution by means of high resolution Rutherford backscattering (HRBS) and elastic recoil detection (HERDA) of ions with an energy of a few MeV, in combination with an electrostatic spectrometer. With this instrument, which has recently been set up at the 6 MV Pelletron accelerator of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Metallforschung in Stuttgart, depth resolutions of 0.1 nm are obtained in HRBS and 0.3 nm in HERDA experiments. This paper gives a short outline of the design and performance of the spectrometer followed by various examples of applications. These comprise examples showing the analyzing power of the instrument, the analysis of an X-ray mirror by HRBS, the study of the initial oxidation of surfaces of aluminum single crystals by HERDA and recent results concerning charge exchange in ion backscattering. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.