Recent applications of nuclear microprobe analysis to frontier materials

Frontier materials, with many potential applications in modem technology, continue to provide challenges for the nuclear microprobe community. Over the past two years, new applications for the nuclear microprobe in the study of frontier materials have been found in diverse areas. These have ranged from investigations of the material composition and purity, through probing lattice locations of possible dopants, to the study of the charge transport properties of single and polycrystalline radiation detectors. The techniques applied ranged from traditional Backscattering and Particle induced X-ray Emission, through emerging techniques such as Ion Beam Induced Charge, to the experimental technique of Ionoluminescence. This paper reviews some of these recent applications of the nuclear microprobe to the study of frontier materials.