ELASTIC RECOIL DETECTION ANALYSIS WITH ATOMIC DEPTH RESOLUTION

Elastic recoil detection analysis (ERD) with swift heavy ions has been improved in view of depth resolution. Profiles of light elements could be measured in carbon near the surface with single atomic layer resolution using Ni-58, I-127 or Au-197 beams with energies between 0.5A MeV and IA MeV and a 03D magnetic spectrograph. Due to the specific ion optical arrangement of the Q3D a relative energy resolution of about 7 x 10(-4) was achieved in ERD experiments although a large solid angle of 5 msr was used. This large acceptance guarantees good statistics even with low ion fluences. In this way the elemental concentration profiles are not essentially disturbed by irradiation damage effects and can be measured in the 0.1% level on an atomic depth scale.