Theoretical and practical aspects of nuclear microprobe analysis of solid surfaces and bulk solids

The aim of this paper is first to describe the nuclear microprobe and to present the analytical capabilities of the different methods involved in nuclear microanalysis resulting from the interactions between the incident ion beam and the solid target, such as proton induced X-ray emission, proton induced gamma-ray emission, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, non-Rutherford scattering, elastic recoil detection and nuclear reaction spectrometry. The respective analytical performances are also discussed. The second purpose of this paper is to illustrate some aspects of nuclear microanalysis applications from materials sciences to earth sciences and life sciences, using recently published data. Thirdly, both recent developments and further progresses in nuclear microprobe technology are detailed regarding as well ion sources, beam focussing as associated microscopic techniques, detection devices and data processing.