ENERGY-DEPENDENCE OF ELASTIC ELECTRON BACKSCATTERING FROM SOLIDS

The theory of electron transport in amorphous materials predicts multiple maxima in the energy dependence of the elastic reflection probability for certain solids and experimental geometries. In particular, two maxima are expected in the energy dependence of the intensity of the elastic peak measured in the geometry of the cylindrical mirror analyzer for medium atomic-number elements. This prediction is confirmed experimentally in the present work. It has been found that the energy dependence of the elastic peak height better agrees with the theoretical energy dependence of the backscattered intensity than does the area of the elastic peak. This observation can be explained in terms of the transmission properties of the analyzer used.